Pottery, Theater, CSS Collaboration, and the Ethics of AI with Miriam Suzanne

Brad: [0:12] Miriam Suzanne, hello.

Miriam: [0:14] Brad. How are you?

Brad: [0:16] I'm doing great. Let's get into it. What, what has you waking up excited these days?

Miriam: [0:21] Oh yeah, that's a, that's a rough question for me. I feel like, the last couple years, haven't been the most exciting for me. except, I've been really trying to refocus on w- what is it that gets me up excited? so that's meant a lot more time in the pottery studio, a lot more time making theater. so we got a show coming up this weekend. been getting lights together for it. We're building a pottery shed in the backyard. I teach pottery once a week. so it's mostly, it's mostly those things. It's the, the things that only cost me money and, really let me yeah, make art. I wanna make art, so

Brad: [1:03] Yeah

Miriam: [1:03] that, that has me. And, and teaching people. I- collaborative stuff, teaching that also, just so rewarding to be in a room with people and see people get excited and help them get to the next step and have a breakthrough and, uh yeah, all that

Brad: [1:20] with the, with the breakthrough stuff, are you mostly talking about the, the teaching pottery or around the theater? 'Cause you've been doing both for a, a long time, although I feel like it's… I, I've seen your, your pottery stuff come online more in recent years

Miriam: [1:37] the pottery is the place where I get to teach people directly in the room, right? So, I mean, I also have that experience teaching web stuff. I mean, I love, I love that, although I rarely get to do that in the room now. Everything is just a Zoom call or a video or something, which that's fine. But it's fun to be in the room with people and see them, see something click for them. And,

Brad: [2:01] Yeah

Miriam: [2:02] w- I'm teaching beginner wheel in the pottery studio, so it's, like, really people going from zero to, like,

Brad: [2:09] Yeah

Miriam: [2:10] their first cylinder and, like, you know, there's some moment there where something clicks for them. And, and, you know, I also hang out in the studio, and there's lots of other people around, and we're helping each other. We're giving each other tips. So it's a similar sort of, like, yeah, people ha- watching people have breakthroughs is, is really fun. Pottery is hard with, like… I don't know. When I left college, I thought my options were to become a full-time production potter, throwing the same piece over and over every day, or never do pottery again because you need all this equipment. And so I just sort of assumed that since I didn't have a path to becoming a production potter that I could see, uh, I was never doing pottery again. So there were, like, 20 years there where I didn't do it. and then somebody was like, "Oh, you know, the rec center has a pottery studio. You can just go to the rec center." Uh, and it changed everything, and, you know, now I, I go to a membership studio where I get more access and, things like that. But

Brad: [3:10] it's heartbreaking that through your experience that y-you're fed this binary or this, this, there's this assumption, and I feel like I've had the same with a career as a musician versus

Miriam: [3:23] Totally.

Brad: [3:24] nothing. And, and there-- turns out you can kinda do whatever you want, and there's like all sorts of ways you can carve out space for it that doesn't need to be your everything, but it also doesn't mean it needs to be your nothing either. And, and I, I wish that more people at colleges and teaching environments specifically like helped paint that picture a little bit better because it's like,

Miriam: [3:53] Yeah

Brad: [3:54] gets fed as this like, "Here's the stuff. This is great. here for a reason. You enjoy it." And I don't know. Figure out, figure out what to do with it. actually just-- I just saw some tap dancing over the weekend. We took my daughter to my wife's hometown, they-- there's Busch Gardens there, and I was like, my wife used-- she used to draw caricatures at Busch Gardens for like six years. So she's really damn good at drawing caricatures. But, so we, we took her to the park, and they had these, these shows, and it was like straight up the whole like Riverdance like all that stuff. And it was, it was like some pretty serious stuff. Like there's like a lot of time and energy that go into a big production like that. I'm sure not, not dissimilar to your, to your theater productions. There's like a lot of coordination,

Miriam: [4:42] Yeah

Brad: [4:43] of work, and you could feel the work that goes into that and

Miriam: [4:48] Aha

Brad: [4:48] it whenever you, you experience that. So I don't know. Yeah. Could you, could you talk about that, that kind of experience? Like putting on a theater production is like such a effort.

Miriam: [4:59] Yeah, it is. And I, I mean, I guess I don't know what to say about it. It's sort of like it's what I've always done, and it's what I've always enjoyed. Uh, theater is what I studied. Um, the web was a mistake. i- and it is for me, it's sort of like theater, theater is just sort of all of the arts together. It's just like, well, you can throw music in there, you can throw design in there, you can throw tech in there. it is dance, it is writing, it's just everything, and put together in whatever way you want. I don't know, I've always approached it in this hybrid way, where I'm like I, I don't care too much about genre. That's not a thing I care about. I don't care too much about, is it more dance or is it more writing or is it more music? we make shows, often my company that have a lot of music in them, uh, to the point where I would say, like, you could classify it as a musical, but you'd be misleading people because if they're expecting a musical to be the thing that they've always known as a musical, it's not that. Words are confusing, right? Labels are confusing 'cause they start to, I don't know, they start to take on baggage of

Brad: [6:10] Yeah

Miriam: [6:11] how we've used them or what genres people have latched onto in some way. But I just find that sort of hybrid communal problem-solving really interesting. How are we gonna, how are we gonna pull this off? How are we gonna make this an experience that brings people in, that, has people asking whatever questions we're looking at? and I think for us, trying to make it so that we're not telling people how to feel about something, we're asking them to have feelings about something. You know, does that… If that makes sense. So it's not like…

Brad: [6:50] perfect sense. Yeah

Miriam: [6:51] Yeah, so not like all of us are gonna cry at this moment, but like, here, here's something. how do you, what do you bring to it? What is, what's your reaction? What's,

Brad: [7:02] I've alwa- I've always found that fascinating about art in general, because whenever you read about certain artists, certain artists do come to the table with, "I do want to elicit this emotion from people." Or people are protective and are like, "No, this is being misinterpreted," or whatever. And then there's other people that seem to have, the awareness that it's like, this is a conversation or this i- this isn't-- it's not up to us to, guide everyone or get everyone to the same place. Like, everyone's going to bring their own stuff. So, so it sounds like you're leaning into that, like, kind of more, we are going to d- present you some stuff, and it's your job to engage with it and come away with your own, feelings and thoughts

Miriam: [7:49] Y- yeah, and it's, our job to give you something worth responding to or that's gonna draw you into the conversation. I mean, we sort of have this, like… In certain ways, our approaches come out of sort of experimental traditions. But there's this place where, like, experimental also is this word that has become sort of synonymous with, like, I don't, I don't care how you experience it. Like, fuck you, here's, here's my art. Deal with it.

Brad: [8:23] Yeah,

Miriam: [8:23] And we sort of feel like, well, that's not, that's not how, that's not how we are.

Brad: [8:29] Yeah.

Miriam: [8:30] want to bring you in, but we want to experiment in how we bring you in, and we want to try things, and we want to see if you'll come with us. And there's some way to, yeah, I don't know. You know, user testing is experimentation with this idea that we're gonna try to bring you in. And I think, you know, that can get gross in other ways of, like pandering or whatever. But finding this, like, how do we, how do we try things and experiment and bring you along for that ride so you're invited into something maybe a little different from what you've seen other places, but but you're welcome in it?

Brad: [9:16] Yeah.

Miriam: [9:16] pushing you away.

Brad: [9:18] Yeah. I love it. And I-- you're, you're painting this picture of there's this idea of kinda like labels and words carry with them connotation, carry with them like, "Ah, yes, even

Miriam: [9:31] Sort of the main thing they do.

Brad: [9:33] Well, right. And but it's the double-edged sword because, yeah,

Miriam: [9:36] Yeah

Brad: [9:36] can translate to, ah, yes, you're just like hammers on the floor for an hour and forty-five minutes to, like, a noise rock soundtrack, which, which could be

Miriam: [9:46] It'd be good.

Brad: [9:47] but yeah, it could be good. But, like, but maybe isn't, isn't the thing. But it s- it sounds like, like a lot of what you're exploring with the theater company is, like, how do we put something in front of you, something that, that doesn't necessarily fit your, your preconceived notions, and to do that in a way that doesn't… Like, like, like you said, you're, you're welcome into it, and, and we want to bring

Miriam: [10:12] Right

Brad: [10:12] it, and we want you to engage with it. That, it's really fascinating. Like, because I, I think that it doesn't have that same like, yeah, fuck you spirit of like, "Here, we're out here. We're, we're going to do this." It sounds, like, very intentionally designed, where it's like we care a lot about originality. We care a lot about this creative thing. The, the genre, the, the musicality or whatever might b-be changing with each production, but it's like we're Would you say that that's like the theme across, like, your years of doing this, is like doing original stuff that's trying to, like, kinda continue to put yet another original brick after the next? Is that, is

Miriam: [10:52] Yeah. Yeah. I

Brad: [10:52] or…?

Miriam: [10:53] mean, I, I struggle a little bit with the word original just because I don't know how much I believe that I'm coming up with something new.

Brad: [10:59] Sure

Miriam: [11:00] think I, I guess, I don't know. Authentic isn't quite right either 'cause I, I sort of don't believe in authenticity as a thing. I believe in, I don't know, integrity or something like

Brad: [11:14] right, all right. Let's talk about, let's talk about your disbelief of the, the authenticity, 'cause that like, that, that, that for me is, is a word I, I, I wield. I think it's a very

Miriam: [11:25] Yeah

Brad: [11:26] So, so yeah, tell me about your disbelief of

Miriam: [11:29] I don't know. I don't, I don't believe that there's, like, one true self or something. you know, I exist differently in different circles and in different spaces, and

Brad: [11:40] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [11:41] all of those are true to me. So I think the danger of authenticity is this, like, what I'm never allowed to change? I'm never allowed to have, have different ways of being in different places?

Brad: [11:58] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [11:58] I'm supposed to be, I don't know, Mark Zuckerberg's one unified identity across, across all of life? Like, I'm not… I don't think that that's a real thing. I don't, you know, I'm queer. I don't like born this way narratives that sort of are like, "No, no, it's okay because it was predetermined and and we're stuck with that." I like instead saying "I'm alive. I'm, like, I'm literally alive." And being alive is growing and changing, and that's all it is.

Brad: [12:33] Yeah

Miriam: [12:33] so I get to, I get to absolutely be different until I die.

Brad: [12:37] Yes.

Miriam: [12:38] That's, the whole thing.

Brad: [12:40] Yes. Yes

Miriam: [12:41] So yeah, so I worry about authenticity as some, like, I don't know, l- locking in of,

Brad: [12:49] Yeah, yeah. Yep,

Miriam: [12:50] yeah.

Brad: [12:52] parameters. Th-this I've defined authentic in that, that becomes the static thing that if you find yourself outside of those lines suddenly, then oops, all of a sudden you're not,

Miriam: [13:04] Right.

Brad: [13:05] you're authentic. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, it's-- I, I, I like everything you're saying there, and I, I think that that's, that's just gets back into to words, right? And their, their

Miriam: [13:15] Yeah.

Brad: [13:15] how they get conveyed. 'Cause like

Miriam: [13:17] Sure

Brad: [13:18] that your, your entire alive self is your auth-authentic self. Your,

Miriam: [13:24] Right.

Brad: [13:24] CSS spec writing self, as well as your musician self, as well, as well as your

Miriam: [13:31] Yeah

Brad: [13:31] as well as your, your queer self. Like it's like all, it's is it… I think it's Walt Whitman that's like, "I contain multitudes," right? And

Miriam: [13:39] Right, exactly.

Brad: [13:40] awesome. That's amazing. I'm gonna need to look this up. There's a, there's a restaurant in Pittsburgh that ha- that carries this name, but it's, it basically like defies explanation or defies d-defies definition. we had our baby shower there. I really

Miriam: [13:56] Okay.

Brad: [13:57] know this better. So it's like, ineffable. Ineffable. Ineffable. yeah.

Miriam: [14:03] Okay. Yeah, interesting.

Brad: [14:04] yeah, yeah.

Miriam: [14:05] Yeah

Brad: [14:06] like kinda defying definition, which

Miriam: [14:09] Right.

Brad: [14:10] kind of… It's, it's, that's kind of a fun and beautiful thing, and I've always, I've always, kind of like enjoyed hanging out in that territory where a lot of times people, like including j-- I was just with some family, and my cousin brought some, some in-law kind of family around, and so it was like, "And here's Brad." And it's like, "What do you do again?" And it's like, I kinda like now hanging out " Miriam: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, What do I do?

Brad: [14:37] Yeah, what do I do?" Yeah. I kinda like not having, like a single answer to that, or it's, it-- back to Mark Zuckerberg, it's complicated, right? Relationship

Miriam: [14:48] Yeah.

Brad: [14:48] status. It's complicated. It's complicated.

Miriam: [14:52] Well, and I think, I think, you know, I have some r- reaction to anything that makes it sound like I think I'm special. or, or more special than other people.

Brad: [15:01] Yeah

Miriam: [15:02] Just like I don't, I don't believe that it's like I'm bringing something totally unique and original and, and, and outside anything that you've ever experienced before. Except that I'm bringing my experience, and you probably haven't experienced my experience before.

Brad: [15:17] Yeah

Miriam: [15:17] I'm just not focused on genre as the goal. Usually… I mean, sometimes genre's interesting to focus on, to be like, " Here's the conventions of a genre. What happens if we push it?" We actually had a great experience as the band once. We were like, "Let's write a dance song. What is a dance song?" And like we had to go looking, and we like found this structure that was like, this is a, this is a pretty classic dance structure. Let's do our best to write into that. And we got a great song from it, and I think a lot of people would be like, "That's not a dance song." And we'd be like, "Well, we tried."

Brad: [15:59] Yeah.

Miriam: [16:00] and we got something interesting from putting our aesthetic onto that structure and, and trying to do what our take on a dance song is.

Brad: [16:10] Yeah. And, and,

Miriam: [16:11] I th- I-

Brad: [16:11] and that, that's great. That's great creative inspiration, and I think that that's like, you see a lot of artists do that. I f- like, for whatever reason over, like as you were saying that, I thought of like the Stones song that was like their like disco song that is like you have no business writing a disco song, but they, they did the same thing. They're just like, "I don't know, like, let's, like, try this out." And then they have, end up with, like, a bigger hit song out of it

Miriam: [16:37] Yeah, I mean, it's

Brad: [16:38] like,

Miriam: [16:38] that's a little bit like, like Velvet Underground's Loaded or Lou Reed. Lou Reed, Velvet Underground? Where they were like, Lou Reed couldn't write a hit, and he was like, "Here, I'll, I'll write an album loaded with hits." And it worked. He did.

Brad: [16:52] but it, but it sounds like you, you're almost, like, approaching it a- almost as, like, an anthropologist or researcher that's kind of deconstructing the anatomy of a dance song or exploring a genre and saying, "What are the qualities of this thing?" And that surfaces the bits that give you things to, like, latch onto that allow

Miriam: [17:13] Yeah

Brad: [17:14] to, to play by the rules, and then

Miriam: [17:17] Mm-hmm.

Brad: [17:18] bend and then break them, and… That's beautiful. So, so your show that's this weekend, long have you and everybody involved in it been working on this?

Miriam: [17:29] Well, so this is-- this one's a little bit different from… We sort of have two sides to our theater company parallel tracks. And they're sort of related in how we view the world but very much unrelated in terms of what happens. So on the one side, we're creating, like, an original show every year or so Like, we're starting to write the, the one for next year simultaneously my co-founder, Julie has been doing work inside prisons for I don't know, 15 years, maybe more. And we've sort of taken that on underneath our q- our company. So this one is the guys inside Lyman Correctional Facility doing "12 Angry Men."

Brad: [18:18] Amazing. Oh my God

Miriam: [18:20] This weekend we'll take all of our lighting equipment and everything that we can. I mean, we have to send them a list in advance and get everything approved and then,

Brad: [18:30] Yeah

Miriam: [18:31] take two hours to get it all checked in through security and whatever, and then we're just in the gym for two days trying to set everything up, write all the cues, do a tech run with the actors and then do two performances of it and pack it all up and get out.

Brad: [18:50] Oh my

Miriam: [18:51] so really tight turnaround and under, under some extreme conditions.

Brad: [18:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so is this your first time doing, like doing it this way? You're saying that Jolie was,

Miriam: [19:05] No, we've…

Brad: [19:06] with it.

Miriam: [19:06] Yeah, Julie's been doing it for a long time, but yeah, it's been, it's been under Grapefruit Lab for a while. We've been doing it and yeah. So this'll be, this'll be the third or fourth show that I've worked on It's a two-hour drive each way and I haven't been able to fit it into my sort of weekly schedule, but I often come in for the production doing the, helping set up the tech

Brad: [19:30] I mean, that, that has to be like, could you d- like describe the, the like atmosphere like, like for all like the actors, everyone like participating in that? c- I would have to imagine that that is like something that they're like latching onto and, and enjoying

Miriam: [19:46] I think one thing that I, I really like about Julie's approach to this is that it's really focused on, They already have art. They are, they are artists already. They don't need to, us to come in and, like, bring them art. They're making art all the time. So what we bring is sort of a professionalization,

Brad: [20:09] Yeah.

Miriam: [20:10] here's, here's how we're, we're just gonna treat you as professional actors. And we're gonna give you training to help you step up to it. And but you're, you're the, you're a creative in this process just like us. So we're facilitating,

Brad: [20:30] Yeah.

Miriam: [20:30] we're bringing in the equipment to make it possible to do a full production. Even if it's gonna be in a gym with random security lights on. We're gonna bring in costumes. We're gonna make it possible to really do this. So

Brad: [20:44] That's

Miriam: [20:44] yeah, so

Brad: [20:45] It's so

Miriam: [20:46] it's really this like we're just gonna, we're gonna give you the space for collaborating and making art together uh, in a professional setting. yeah.

Brad: [20:56] love how you use the, the word facilitate, 'cause that, that's what it sounds like. It's like, and to, to sort of draw a line to your pottery teaching as well, that's, that's also the

Miriam: [21:07] Yeah.

Brad: [21:08] worth

Miriam: [21:08] yeah

Brad: [21:09] like it's not like, I am, creative artist person, and I will teach you to be an artist." It's like, It's like, has an innate creative capacity.

Miriam: [21:21] Yeah.

Brad: [21:21] is an artist, whether they think of themselves that way or

Miriam: [21:25] Yeah.

Brad: [21:25] and your job is to just extract it, facilitate it, and just give them the,

Miriam: [21:30] Yeah.

Brad: [21:31] and

Miriam: [21:31] something in there, there's something in there I wanna get into at some point. But I don't wanna veer us off of prison work if there's more there. But I've been thinking a lot about creativity lately. So if you wanna veer into that

Brad: [21:44] Go for it. Please tell me. Tell me

Miriam: [21:47] Well, there's, there's sort of two things that I'm holding up next to each other thinking about this. One is, like, why didn't I become a production potter out of college? that could've been a path I pursued, right? And I was taking a lot of pottery. Like, I, I could've finished with a pottery degree, and I could've gone to somewhere to apprentice. Why didn't I do that? And I think part of it was at the time I had this, I had this sense of like, "No, I need to make original things that are creative." And then I, I didn't have enough… I don't know. I was, I was scared that production pottery would be, not creative enough or something, and that I didn't have the vision for something totally unique, right? And so did I end up not doing pottery for 20 years because I had some unrealistic expectation of what making art is or what being an artist is? And is, is that sad? So that's the one side of what I'm thinking about or, or one, one piece that I'm throwing in there. The other is, so I, I do a pottery market now. I, I go to these markets. I'm selling my stuff. I have it out at a table, and people come up all the time and they say, "I'm not creative like you," right? And I'm selling mugs and bowls and shit. And I'm like what here could you not learn to do? All that I did was I looked at the shape of a mug and I thought, " What's my opinion about it? What, what shape do I like?" And then I made that shape, and I keep making that shape trying to, like, hone it and, like, how can I… Every time I get one out of the kiln, I'm like, "Yeah, okay, but I have one more opinion." And I go back I'm just looking at things and bringing my opinion to them. And I love that, and I love that I'm not worried about whether it's totally unique or I'm just like, "What, what's my point of view? When I look at this, what do I like? What would I like better? How can I, how can I shift it?" and now I'm like, "Oh, I'd be happy doing production pottery." Like, if my, if that's just, like, I spend all day thinking about what I like in a mug, and trying different things and then making a bunch of them, and then other people use them and maybe like them,

Brad: [24:16] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [24:16] that's great. That's so great. So that's, yeah, that's…

Brad: [24:19] 20 years.

Miriam: [24:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brad: [24:22] but I think, I think that what you're touching on is something that so many people, all of those people that are approaching you at the markets and stuff saying, "I'm not creative," or talking themselves out of it, and so much of it has to do with, "Here's my preconceived notion of what an artist is or what a creative person is, and, and, and here's what they do specifically." Or if you're, if you do this kind of, like, music or whatever, then, like, here's what that looks like. And, and it's out- it's outward-facing, where it's like, here's somebody else looking in at me and what their

Miriam: [24:58] Right

Brad: [24:59] are, and do I have that to put myself up against this invisible, invented audience almost, and, like, receive their judgment? That then ends up talking you out of the whole affair, right? And then, And then, you never do it. And, and it-- and what you're describing is, like, this, this kind of like almost like a, a kind of going inward, and then you realize, oh, the only person you really have to satisfy is your, your own self and your own curiosity, and give yourself the permission to explore what you think is interesting.

Miriam: [25:34] Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: [25:36] That's freaking beautiful. it's the old trope of, like, you know, art versus design, I suppose. But, like, know each other through

Miriam: [25:44] Yeah

Brad: [25:45] and our work, and we both have done, like, client services stuff, and, like, that's a, it's a different gig than

Miriam: [25:51] Yeah

Brad: [25:52] think is interesting and let me do more of that.

Miriam: [25:55] Well, I think a little bit of what I'm saying is that having had a career in both, I don't see a difference, or I feel like they help each other out, right? They're… Like, when I make a mug, I am just doing design. But instead of a client, well, I have customers. I, you know, I, okay. Or I mean, even if I didn't sell at a market, I'm giving them to friends or something, right? And so I'm getting this… I'm getting some sort of feedback from, from people. I'm trying to build something that is gonna relate to people. That's the same thing I'm doing in the theater. I'm trying to build something that tells a story that or, or brings up some questions, or y- presents an aesthetic or whatever it is. And for me, it's not gonna be done until other people have interacted with it, and, and I am concerned about that interaction. I want, I want this to reach people in some way, right? Even if it's very few people.

Brad: [26:59] GPT

Miriam: [26:59] I want to hear their reactions to it. That's why I'm doing… I'm not doing it just for the process for me to express something. I don't know. I'm, I'm sort of, I'm trying to be part of a conversation.

Brad: [27:13] Yeah. Yeah

Miriam: [27:15] and I see that very similar to doing… Like, client work changes the power dynamics but it's, to me, the same process. I just now have to, yeah, uh, bring somebody else along in a way that they have more power. I don't know

Brad: [27:32] It's like you're, you're I think that you're touching on something that is, that is interesting, is that, like, everything is interpersonal, even, like, self-expression isn't-- You're, you're not… There, there's one artist that comes to mind. He was, like, like a janitor that spent, like, 30 years constructing this, like, giant church out of, like, scrap, like, foil for, like, 30 years, and they, like, only found it after he died. It was just wild.

Miriam: [27:55] Wow. Yeah, Yeah, Really for himself

Brad: [27:59] own. Right, right, right. But, like, most art and expression and e-especially things like theater, yeah, there's this, this bi-directional kinda relationship with other people. And I like how you said that, like, client work is that, but there's, like… Yeah, it, it shifts the power dynamic. It's not like, "I hope everybody-- creating my art. I'm in full control over, like, like, the process and the outcomes, and, like, up to the customers or the audience to see if it lands with them or not." Like, with the client, you're like,

Miriam: [28:29] Yeah.

Brad: [28:30] need them to be on the ride with you as, as a collaborator a little bit, and Yeah.

Miriam: [28:36] Yeah. But to a certain extent, I feel like, you know I don't know, Julie and I have this theater company, right? We bring other people in 'cause we're rarely doing shows that just the two of us can pull off. So in that case, we sort of have final say, but that's sort of just like we're the clients or something, you know? Like, and we've got other, other creative professionals involved and they're participating, but it's, for them, a bit like client work, right? Like, 'cause we've got some sort of final say. so that's not so different from a client hires me. I'm just on the other side of that equation. I'm often… You know, I, I see myself as a designer as brought in to facilitate the process. Like, well, one of the first big jobs that we got at Oddbird was working on a project for Mozilla, and I panicked. I mean, w- I had just been doing web development a couple years and I was like, "What do I have to teach Mozilla about web development?" But it very quickly became clear that I wasn't working with a team of designers. I was working with a team of, product engineers who had never built a website, right?

Brad: [29:52] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [29:52] and so I did have something to bring. I was filling a different role. They have designers at Mozilla somewhere

Brad: [30:00] Yeah.

Miriam: [30:00] not on that team. we were bringing in… They knew how to build Firefox, and they knew that better than me. But I knew how to build a website that would work in Firefox , and I knew that better than this team that I was working with.

Brad: [30:14] Yeah.

Miriam: [30:14] so we, we had, we had things to share.

Brad: [30:17] Yep

Miriam: [30:17] and I, you know, it was important that I listen to them about what is the tool that they need and how does their process work and all these things. But then I'm brought in to say something about what is the process of building a website and how do we, how do we work through stages of design and all that sort of thing.

Brad: [30:37] Yeah

Miriam: [30:37] so in some ways I am, again, facilitating the process I mean, I've always seen my specialty as collaborative creativity collaborative making. That's the specialty I bring. So I bring that to theater. I bring that to my band. I bring that into the prisons. I bring that to web development. I'm here to talk about how we all together get to something that we're all proud of

Brad: [31:05] It's beautiful. That's beautiful. was that always apparent, or do you feel like you've just had a trajectory across so many different creative, like, and outlets that you're just like, "Oh, okay, that's, clearly a thing I gravitate towards"? Or, or has that been, like, apparent from, like, early on?

Miriam: [31:25] I th- I think it became pretty apparent pretty early on. I mean, I think it's the only reason I ended up… Like, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be here,

Brad: [31:33] Yeah.

Miriam: [31:34] if, if it wasn't for that. Like, I had no, I had no interest in tech sort of as a broad category or in, yeah, in web development sort of as this thing to go do. I just needed some websites, and then I found that CSS was a weird performance art. And I was like, "Okay, this is interesting," and collaborating on design was similar to collaborating on theater. And it all just sort of… It, it just felt like a continuation of the same things, but in a way that people would actually pay me money for.

Brad: [32:13] That's it. And and there, and there's a reason why this field is littered with so many musicians and people that were

Miriam: [32:20] Yeah

Brad: [32:22] in bands or

Miriam: [32:23] I,

Brad: [32:24] doing

Miriam: [32:24] some…

Brad: [32:25] words. Yeah

Miriam: [32:26] I don't remember what conference it was. It was years ago. There was some front-end conference and somebody on stage asked who had a computer science degree, and like four hands went up. And then they asked who has a music degree, and it was half the room. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Okay. Something about, you know, aesthetic math, I think, or something. Yeah.

Brad: [32:49] That's so, that's amazing. A- what's, what's crazy is that you've gone down the rabbit hole all the way like to the basement of artistic math, like, like at like the CSS spec level, and now you're collaborating with people from across the world, people that are like sweating the details of

Miriam: [33:10] Yeah

Brad: [33:11] le- a level of, of kind of like care and rigor and minutiae, and there's like a lot of-- Surely there's like a lot of just hard of dynamics and, and things that you need to take into consideration. So do, could you talk a bit about applying your creative facilitation to that process? ' Miriam: Yeah, yeah, weird. I like, I like diving into things. I guess it's my hyperfocus. yeah, I mean, it was a similar sort of thing to, like, when I first joined the working group feeling similar to when I first worked for Mozilla or something, right? I'm like, "This group, their attention to detail and their skill here is so much farther than, than mine. I don't understand why they would want me in the room." And then I realized that there were only four of us in the room who build websites professionally, and I was like, "Oh, right, they need the four of us to talk about what is the actual experience here of building a website professionally."

Brad: [34:09] Yeah

Miriam: [34:09] and so that's, that's part of what I have to bring. I mean, the other thing I found is, like, as soon as I was working on sort of big prominent specs, the majority of the job was just can I get Google and Apple and Mozilla to agree on something? And so it's the same sort of, like, design process of getting different stakeholders, finding out what their concerns are seeing if I can build a design for a CSS feature that meets the criteria and everybody can agree on it. So it felt, it felt very much like the same thing. I'm just working with spec text and the shape of an API instead of CSS and the design of a layout or people and space and, and building a theater production. It's all sort of

Brad: [35:00] Yeah

Miriam: [35:02] getting everybody's input and then trying to sort of edit it together and facilitate, how do we solve all these problems, which I find fascinating. How do we, how do we solve all these problems? And it always means a lot of trade-offs and,

Brad: [35:15] Yeah.

Miriam: [35:16] But you learn really interesting things from the, the different concerns different people are bringing and yeah, it's fascinating being in a room of browser engineers who, uh… I mean, the CSS working group I find just the most fascinating. And, I mean, there's politics and there's, there's fights and it's not like a, a perfect process or something. But what I find really interesting about it always is that these are extremely technical people sitting in a room discussing what's gonna look good. Like half of them are like typography nerds on the side or something, right?

Brad: [35:55] Yep

Miriam: [35:55] have some-- They have this engineering, this deep engineering background. They know the inside of WebKit or Chromium or Gecko backwards and forwards, and they're sitting in a room discussing what text wrap pretty should mean. Like what, what is pretty text wrapping? I, I love it. I love it

Brad: [36:20] That's amazing. It's amazing. It's, it, it-- And, and that is, that is like the, the beauty of that fusion between like technology, aesthetics, like

Miriam: [36:30] Yeah

Brad: [36:30] scaling that, making that like every time that that little declaration gets used, it freaking looks good. And like, I just get to drop it in, and then my shit looks good. And you're like, oh, you're, you're sweating these details so that people can just

Miriam: [36:48] Yeah. Yeah

Brad: [36:51] a sudden typography sucks less on the web across every website and every app like on the, like the planet? like sign me up. And like, and, and what's fascinating and like the story you're telling about like your own kind of multifaceted creative self, each one of those people that you're working with, like you're saying, are like these typography nerds on the side, or they're coming from their own sort of like pulling from their own world experience and

Miriam: [37:19] Yeah

Brad: [37:20] kind of come together and you're, you're finding that common ground and like making it happen. It's, it's, it's-- That's beautiful. It's, it's, it's completely beautiful. And I, I think that one of the, the things that's so beautiful about that is that there has to be, almost by definition, this multidisciplinary of

Miriam: [37:42] Yeah.

Brad: [37:42] and perspective to it.

Miriam: [37:44] Yeah

Brad: [37:44] ha- it can't happen with just somebody who's like coming from like a computer science degree, because of what that code is doing, need to all of a sudden pull from the thousands of years of, of written and, and everything, words and characters and shapes and shit like that. It's so freaking beautiful. Ah, amazing.

Miriam: [38:06] it's wild. And I mean, I think it's like, I sometimes am like, "What, what the fuck am I doing here?" Just in, in web design in general. Like I, I never-- It feels accidental, right? It feels like this was not part of the plan, and I'm not convinced that tech is an in-industry that I like. I feel a little bit like when I got into web development, it wasn't part of tech. Like, there was a separation there and then like tech ate web development and web design in a way that I don't like and don't feel comfortable here.

Um, and I'm like: [38:43] How did I get here? And then I look at that and I'm like, "Oh, well, that's very clear." It's very clear how I got here. Because it is this, uh, sort of, yeah, problem-solving with this h- hybrid media. And then not just that, it's, it's really audience interactive in a way that other code… A lot of code is sort of building building interfaces, right? And that's one thing. But CSS is the user controls it. The, the, the end user has the final say, and it's this collaboration between the end user and the browser that they choose to use and the device that they're on and us, and it's this, it's just this weird… It is a collaboration. CSS itself is a collaborative medium which is one of the things that I think, like when somebody asks like, "Why do people get frustrated with CSS?" I think it's that. I think people think that they are--

Brad: [39:38] yeah.

Miriam: [39:39] I think people think that they're in control, and they're not in control.

Brad: [39:42] Yeah.

Miriam: [39:42] if you don't approach it as a collaborative medium, you're gonna get frustrated because your collaborators

Brad: [39:47] Yep.

Miriam: [39:47] keep showing up

Brad: [39:49] Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam: [39:50] and they have different opinions than you do, right? And that's frustrating if you think you're a solo artist. but I'm here because I played with CSS and was like, "Oh, I'm collaborating. That's fun.

Brad: [40:04] Yeah

Miriam: [40:05] let's, let's explore that."

Brad: [40:07] I think that that's really beautifully put because I think that that are the, the triple equal signs and, like, the true and the false and, like, this, you know, this, this programming that is, like, always going to predictably spit out the right outcome and, and it's like, I can appreciate that, and I appreciate the appreciation of that. Like, people who really are like, "Oh, this is good," and that, that there's something very satisfying in, like, writing a, a program or a loop or whatever. And, Oh, look at that." I, I'll never forget the first time I got that to show up where it's like, like, loop through all of my, like, blog posts in, like, a WordPress thing, and it's like, "Oh, I did it." It-- You know? Like, that's really fun, but, but I love how you're drawing that distinction between, like, here is this thing that just on what device you're looking at, depending on what the user's preferences are, depending on, like, a whole lot of factors, yeah, you don't control this experience. This is not an eight and a half by eleven piece of paper that this is always going to look this way. So, so just by its just inherent nature, John Allsopp, Dao of Web Design, all that good

Miriam: [41:20] Yeah

Brad: [41:20] It's just, it's just like here is this thing that is innately fuzzy, and if you are already comfortable in that kind of fuzzy, like rejecting that, that kind of this is either true or false, but you just are able to hang out in that kind of fuzzy middle ground there, you're gonna have a

Miriam: [41:40] Right

Brad: [41:40] with CSS. But if you like that, then yeah, you're probably gonna

Miriam: [41:45] Yeah. can I pull it back to the, to the topic in, in the ether? Which is to me… So I keep hearing developers say, " I'm output oriented. I care about the results. I'm results oriented, not process oriented." Um, and using that as an explanation for why, like, it doesn't matter if I use AI or not,

Brad: [42:11] Yeah

Miriam: [42:12] because I'm, I'm results oriented. And I look at that and I say, "You care about different results than I do." You have to narrow down your definition of results to think that you can ignore process, and that process doesn't impact results. I'm not process oriented just because like, I have some process that I think is funny or,

Brad: [42:40] Yeah

Miriam: [42:41] fun to do. I'm process-- I focus on process because I think it changes the results we get. And to me, that collaborative nature of CSS is part of that, right? Like, it's that, like, I don't control the results. I control h- I can, I, I am part of a system where results are determined through this process that's collaborative. And so by focusing on the process, we, we all together get better results, and that's important.

Brad: [43:16] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [43:16] and so I can't just go like, "Oh, the process doesn't matter. I'm results oriented," because that means that I only care about the results I see in my browser on my machine. Like, it's very works on my machine to call yourself results oriented. That's my hot take.

Brad: [43:35] Yeah. I, I, I think that that's, I think that that's very good 'cause, like, what they're describing there is this th- this kind of a, a walling off or, or putting up

Miriam: [43:45] Yeah.

Brad: [43:46] around being able to a different perspective, right? And, and it's that, whether we're talking about AI, which, which let's, let's do that or throughout our careers, I'm sure, like, we've all kind of worked with people that are just, like, adamant about things, and you can kind of be like, "Hey," like, "here's this

Miriam: [44:05] trade-offs.

Brad: [44:06] Right. Right. Everybody's coming to, like, as you've been, I feel like very deftly describing, it's like everybody's coming with their own experience, with their own expertise, and good creative collaboration is when those different experiences and perspectives and wants and needs and gotchas and the rest of it all get thrown in the stew together, and you

Miriam: [44:28] Right.

Brad: [44:29] hash through it, and you, and you, and

Miriam: [44:31] Yeah

Brad: [44:31] the work and you hash through it, and then you end up with a result that you actually can collectively feel proud of.

Miriam: [44:38] Right

Brad: [44:39] it's when there's somebody, and usually it's like just some dude on the team that's just like, " I hear what you're saying, but like I

Miriam: [44:51] Right

Brad: [44:51] liked this," and like, "I'm

Miriam: [44:54] I know the answer, yeah.

Brad: [44:55] Right. Right. Right. "And

Miriam: [44:57] Yeah

Brad: [44:58] you all would just see it my way, then, then this would all go better." And, and of course, it never goes better whenever you just have these people just kind of, yeah, like building up a wall around them and their their preferences. And it, and so it's, it really is in that willingness and ability to kind of come together and participate in a process that ends up with results that just a single person feels good about and it's like, "Oh yeah, my, my idea won. Everybody else was like left in the dust."

Miriam: [45:29] Okay.

Brad: [45:29] it, that's the kind of shittiness that it's like we want to get away from. The best projects I've been a part of are the ones where people are like, everyone sees themselves in the result. Everyone

Miriam: [45:41] Yeah.

Brad: [45:41] along for the ride and

Miriam: [45:43] Yep.

Brad: [45:44] they left behind, the compromises they made in order to like m-meet the greater good, and that you all come out w-- and go and, this exists now." And like, yeah, sure, was it the exact perfect thing I had in my head? No. But like we all got there, and we all got there together like…

Miriam: [46:03] would the perfect thing in your head, would it, would it have still been perfect in reality? I doubt it.

Brad: [46:09] Yeah. Bye

Miriam: [46:11] I think that's always a, like we, we get attached to something in our heads, but it's not real. It's not real. And so we have to have… And I think, you know, I'm thinking about lowercase process. Like, you know, like we do lowercase agile development. Agile in that we try to be agile about it not in that like we follow some set of rules that are describing what that process should look like. I don't know. I, I find, I find rigid processes interesting to study and uninteresting to follow. like I think a lot of them have really good ideas and then when it becomes just a set of rules, eh, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But there's often like a mindset that's worth taking away or something. I remind our team sometimes that we're agile not because it avoids mistakes, but because it responds to them. Like we don't have to feel like, "Oh, how did we, how did we go down the wrong path?" It's more like, "No, no, this is, that was part of the plan." We planned for going down the wrong path sometimes and being able to turn around. That's the key

Brad: [47:21] Yeah. And that, and that's part of that facilitation that's sometimes very challenging for people who, again, aren't used to living in that fuzziness

Miriam: [47:33] Right

Brad: [47:33] like, they want the certitude especially… Yeah, it's like we're ponying up a bunch of cash to do this thing. We had a

Miriam: [47:40] yeah

Brad: [47:41] We're down the road. What do you mean the plan is changing? Like, oh shit, we're, like,

Miriam: [47:45] Yeah, yeah.

Brad: [47:46] It, it takes people like you to be able to be like, "Hey, it's,

Miriam: [47:51] It takes people like you to be able to be like-

Brad: [47:51] actually okay."

Miriam: [47:53] Does this feel relatable? I always feel like there's a, there's a point, I don't know, it's 65 to 75% of the way into any project, any project, where you've put in more work than you're seeing results. And it happens every single project. Like, there's just no way around it. There's no way to move results earlier, 'cause at some point you have to be taking some risks and getting out over your skis, and you have to push through that point to get to the end of a project and find out if it worked. Or to… You have to get into that point of like, "Oh, shit, this might not work," to step back, take a look at it, and be like, "Okay, what's, what's the missing pieces? How do we fix it? How do we, how do we get back?" And there's sort of a like, until you get there, you're not gonna know what those fixes are. So, you have to get yourself to that point where it's, where you've put in too much work and you're seeing no results. And, and that's when you can start to understand the, the thing you're making.

Brad: [49:02] I think that you're dead on even with like your like 65% 75%. I think that those are accurate, cause, 'cause like the first 10 to 15% is just getting going. And like I

Miriam: [49:15] Yeah

Brad: [49:16] there's something especially whenever you're working with other people or you have like new collaborators or something, it takes a long time to get to know one another, to get into groove with one another, to like even just kind of like collectively paint the picture going, "Here's where we're going." that's the-- a full 10 to 15, maybe even 20% of, of the project. And then there's those kinda like rough kind of first steps where you s- are taking your first collective steps together, that feels a little uneasy, but at the same time you give yourself quite a bit of grace because you're like, "Well, we're just getting started." And then you end up kinda getting into like a, "Oh, okay," like this kinda feels like, like a bit of like a rhythm or whatever. And then there's like some-- this, this

Miriam: [50:03] There's that dip.

Brad: [50:05] there's that dip and then, and then you kind of are like, "Yeah, something needs that…" Like w- you know, you're looking at the, the timeline or the… It's like can't keep going at this pace, so we gotta like, fire, activate

Miriam: [50:18] Yeah.

Brad: [50:19] or the, or turbocharge this or whatever. And that's, that's whenever you end up kinda And it, and it's at that place that that you're like you find yourself, yeah, looking over a very scary ledge

Miriam: [50:32] Yeah. Like, this, this might fail, but maybe we finally… Like, maybe we finally have enough to understand what we're doing. Like, like we've built enough to, to now get a big picture and understand it and, and know what needs to change to get the rest of the way or something. It's-- And I think that's always the hardest part in terms of facilitating a collaboration. That's always the point. And I'll try to remind a team at the start of a project, like, "We're gonna get to this 75% mark and it's gonna suck. You are gonna feel depressed a week before we open the show. That's when you're gonna be depressed, and then it's gonna come together. We're gonna figure out how to make it come together, 'cause that's what we do. We figure out how to make it come together.

Brad: [51:16] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [51:17] we're not stuck at that point.

Brad: [51:19] Yeah.

Miriam: [51:20] Remember that we're not stuck at that point."

Brad: [51:22] Well, but, but, but that i- that is where the, you know, fear and doubt and all of, like, that stuff can come in and, like, we've seen it happen where on who the people involved are, like, you know, some stakeholders, especially the people that are controlling the purse strings, they have a lower tolerance for that fuzziness or for that, like, risk or for that whatever. They're like, "We need this, know, to, to work." And so you can get to that point where at that, like, place and they can start, like, kinda having those conversations. That's that's where it's like you kinda need to, like, jump in front and be like, "Wait!" You know, like, y- that's, that's where

Miriam: [52:00] Yeah yeah,

Brad: [52:01] we're

Miriam: [52:02] L- let us… Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Let us, let us solve the problem

Brad: [52:08] Yeah. Yeah. And that, and that's-- Man, that's just… Creative work is, is just kind of inherently unknowable until it actually

Miriam: [52:20] Yeah.

Brad: [52:20] Like that's,

Miriam: [52:21] Yeah

Brad: [52:22] it's by definition. Like there's a reason why we're not like, it's like, "Cool, we're just going to go through this specific process and end up with these specific results each and every time."

Miriam: [52:32] Right

Brad: [52:32] not, that's not the, that's not the

Miriam: [52:35] It's not how it works. Yeah.

Brad: [52:37] Right.

Miriam: [52:38] Well, it's maybe-- I mean, maybe that comes back around to the, like, creativity is just looking at something and having a perspective on it. in order to have a perspective, I need something to look at. Um, Like, we can start from some theoretical perspective about what we've seen before but then we're a little bit in the dark until we have something that we can look at and be like, "Oh, it's far enough along that I have opinions." How do we, how do we now finish shaping it?

Brad: [53:03] So I'm gonna use that as my bit to bring this all back into the, the zeitgeist that is AI. Because I think that there's actually something-- I st- I've been starting to pick at this a little bit in, in working with these kind of creative collaborations for a long time, and you just saying, it's like, "Oh, yeah," and then, like, we need to, like, look at something. A lot of times, historically, it's taken a long time to get to that place where we're looking at, at something. And I, I wish that more places were cool with my poorly done napkin sketches and even, like, designers just kind of like Balsamiq. Remember, like, the little, like, squiggly lines and kinda like Comic Sans kinda stuff? It's like, it's really only until you're, like, pretty, like, far down the line that, that like, all of a sudden people start having these, like, opinions about, about, things and stuff. So, what I've seen is a lot of time spent on calls where people are just spending the majority of the time trying to talk each other out of doing the work, right? The engineers usually especially. " Here's why that

Miriam: [54:11] Yeah No, that's gonna be hard.

Brad: [54:13] Right.

Miriam: [54:13] We shouldn't do it 'cause that's hard.

Brad: [54:15] right. Right. Or, "Well, we could do it this way, or we could do it this way, or we could do it this way." One of the things that I have seen and I've been enjoying with this new kind of, like, process having this a-available to us is that we're able to get to that thing, that part where we're all kinda like looking at something and that these people who aren't, who historically haven't been the, "Oh, I'm not creative. I don't know what this is."

Miriam: [54:44] Yeah

Brad: [54:45] have a perspective or, like, you, you know the, the user behaviors or you know the business goals or you know the whatever it is. It's like, let's all have it. Like, everybody, like, share your perspective, and we're able to, like, sorta synthesize it. And instead of using our, our time on a meeting together talking each other out of doing some work, let's actually do that work collaboratively, collectively together, look at something and then go, "Well, this all just manifested in front of our eyes in like thirty seconds." So we all know that that's not, like, the finished piece. So what do we like about this? What do we not like about this? What is this doing

Miriam: [55:22] Yeah

Brad: [55:23] this doing well? And I've found that to be this, this thing that I'm like, huh, as someone who facilitates creative collaboration and enjoys stuff and likes bringing people from different-- with different experiences together, I'm like, here's this thing that allows this process to be a bit more sort of participatory and communal rather than like, I am the design expert,

Miriam: [55:53] Yeah, yeah

Brad: [55:55] I will bestow my, my gifts unto you, and you will give it the green check or tell me to make the logo bigger and I'll come back.

Miriam: [56:03] I don't know. To me, doing a design mock-up early and showing an AI mock-up early have similar collaborative problems. And so I don't like either one. 'Cause to me, I'm like, like we will actually our, our designers will do high-fidelity stuff early on,

Brad: [56:23] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [56:24] but they, we won't show it to a client. I, we refuse to show clients anything high fidelity early on. It's sort of like designers know the process, and so they're, they're thinking several levels at once. But we want early in the process for clients to answer specific questions. And if we show them something that looks done, they start answering the wrong questions. They're like worried about the shade of blue, and I'm like, "We are not ready for you to worry about a shade of blue." And so we will, we will literally strip color and design out of what we show clients. So we'll have something beautiful,

Brad: [57:06] Yeah.

Miriam: [57:07] and we will show something ugly,

Brad: [57:10] Yes

Miriam: [57:11] we don't want that premature sheen. I think that's the, the f- the phrase that comes from some interview that I saw quoted in a, computers add this, this ability to get ahead of ourselves and make it look pretty before we're ready to answer those questions. And so that's where I'm like, I'm not s- I'm not sure, like I, I want the napkin sketches. I want to be have- answering napkin sketch questions, and I want to focus on that. And then I want to move to the next set of questions. And so I don't see much advantage in skipping ahead.

Brad: [57:50] Yeah

Miriam: [57:50] I'm like, that just, that just muddies now what are we talking about?

Brad: [57:55] I wholeheartedly agree with you there, where it's like, it's like the, the time in the, in the process, in the, in the general arc is like- Yeah … having all of the conversations. I, I'll, I'll give you like a specific example. So Melissa now, works at, at a private practice a therapy practice, and the owner of the practice had old rickety website just, just totally, just pretty fundamentally busted.

Miriam: [58:21] Mm-hmm.

Brad: [58:22] so it's like having the first conversations where the conversation's about like, "What are your-- what do you care about? What are your, what are your values?" And like she didn't even really… I kinda, you know, did the old bait and switch where it's like, "Oh, we just think that this is just a meet and greet," but it's actually like, you know, this is us just kinda digging into. We don't-- not talking about the website until like an hour into the conversation at all, right? And so it's just like kinda, yeah, doing all of that like kinda rich work to like kinda get things what the hell even is the thing. I whole heart- wholeheartedly agree that it's like, yeah, you don't wanna just be going, "Cool, so we're gonna make a website? All right, let's make a website. How do we like that?" Like, yeah, it's like you- there's no get- there's no getting around that, like, the, the research, the, the heart of like what it is that we're even doing. Are we solving the right problems? Are we like looking-- Do we have the right materials in place?

Miriam: [59:18] and I think particularly with people less experienced with the process, how do we help show them where we are in the process? How do we help them understand what questions should be answered now, and what questions on that phone call should we just say, "That's a question for later. We'll get there. We'll get there. Take note of it. Take note of it. Write it down somewhere.

Brad: [59:41] App

Miriam: [59:41] Come back to it. We'll let you know when we get there,

Brad: [59:44] Yep.

Miriam: [59:44] and then we'll talk about it."

Brad: [59:46] and I think that-- So, so all of that is, like, rich But eventually, like, you, you get to that point, what I've seen, despite my best efforts, like if it were up to me, we'd be doing things whole lot differently. But, like, i-in the course of a lot of my collaborations and stuff, there's a lot of, like, round trips, and there's, like, a lot of things and, like, a lot of… You get to this point where it's like, becomes this, this kind of, um… I always get really nervous whenever designers, like, peel off, and then I don't hear from them for a long

Miriam: [1:00:17] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that would make me nervous.

Brad: [1:00:21] what are you, what

Miriam: [1:00:22] Okay.

Brad: [1:00:23] there? How are you doing?" And then, and then sure enough, like they, they come back with like, you know, something that's just, just, just like wildly, like, out of bounds or whatever. So, so all to say is, like, I-I've felt this pull and, like, we've seen it with, like, a lot of the tooling where it's like, okay, people are doing like these, like, high fidelity mocks in these tools, and then there's now like a toggle switch that allows you to switch over into developer mode and it's like, and that, know, I-I understand like the utility of it, but I've seen like a lot of these processes and tooling that has like kinda come up that end up sort of siloing people and keeping people away from one another. And

Miriam: [1:01:01] Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: [1:01:02] how d- how do we,

Miriam: [1:01:04] How do we…

Brad: [1:01:04] we get more

Miriam: [1:01:07] To me it feels like we keep, and this is the, this is the software brain that drives the entire tech industry we run up against these very sort of human organizational problems and we go like, "I see a shortcut with more software." And I just, I just, I'm so tired of that as a perspective. You know? Like, I'm just like, like fix your organization. Fix the organizational structure. It doesn't have to be like this. we don't have to create these highly siloed organizations and then go like, "Oh, why is it so siloed? Let's build more software on top of it." We can actually fix the organizations. I don't know. To me it's, like it's, it's software brain, it's capitalism brain. I don't know. It's like,

Brad: [1:01:55] Yeah

Miriam: [1:01:56] like capitalism wants us siloed. That's how we're most replaceable. swap somebody in, swap somebody out. It doesn't matter. They're just a cog. They just fit, fit here. I get it. It's cheaper for the CEOs and then they give themselves a raise. I don't know. I am just so tired of like solving these very human problems that, yeah, I mean, the problem is collaboration. Let's, let's collaborate.

Brad: [1:02:23] It feels like, like a non-answer 'cause, like, I've said w- just what you said and, and people are just like, "But so anyways, just, like, tell me the tool."

Miriam: [1:02:33] Yeah, exactly. Well, and, and, I feel specifically with when the tool being discussed is one where you have to start the conversation by being like, "Let's set aside all the ethical concerns

Brad: [1:02:44] Yeah.

Miriam: [1:02:45] then discuss whether it's useful." And I'm like sorry, you lost me there at setting aside all the ethical concerns." I don't, I don't buy it. I don't, I don't buy every single new technology being sold as democratizing. And then what we mean by democratizing is a different set of people have power now. Um, That's not democratizing. Democratizing is we're all in this. And you're not gonna convince me that three large companies doing mass surveillance to steal all of our data and burn down our world to give me an answer machine that gets the answer wrong half the time, that that is democratizing just because I have access to it.

Brad: [1:03:29] Yeah

Miriam: [1:03:30] that is a company selling me a product. That's not a neutral technology that we can use however we want. That's a product that I

Brad: [1:03:38] R

Miriam: [1:03:38] can use. I can decide to use that product, but it's a product, and it's being sold to me. I don't know. I, I have other ideas for how to solve these problems. I don't need your mass surveillance product to be the one answer. I saw an interesting interview with a historian who was saying, "We've already given up on democracy. We haven't had democracy for a little while now because democracy isn't the voting. Democracy is the debating. Democracy is the being in a room and, and discussing with stakeholders what's gonna work and how we see the world and how we're gonna live in a shared world together, and it's that work of consensus building. And instead, the consensus building is already moderated by corporate algorithms corporations who have a stake and tell us what can be debated and how to debate it." And she was like, "Yeah, we can't… You can't do democracy under those circumstances. It's already gone. All that we have left is voting." And then she mentions a, 1950s short story by Asimov and I, I went back and I read it. Uh, it's called, Franchise. Where the, The supercomputer has determined how people will vote. And so it just has to do one final interview every election cycle. It picks the most average man, it interviews him, and it determines the election result based on that interview because we have all the data and, ooh, we can just predict, right? And then you look and, and Sam Altman is saying exactly this. He's saying, he's saying that's how it should be. The AI will facilitate democracy, it will make democracy better because it will know what we all want, and then it will make the decision for us based on our true desires, right? And then these guys are always defining true desire as whatever keeps us in their app, right? And that's somehow, that's somehow more true, more authentic than what I actually want. Like, what I will get addicted to is more authentic. I don't trust authenticity , right? Like, like partially because of Mark Zuckerbergs in the world, I don't trust authenticity because they keep telling me that Facebook will be great if we just all have a single identity and, and know that identity across all systems and it never changes. Everything will be great if we just trust the computer to take in what it sees as our relevant data and predicts everything else from there. But who gets to determine which data is relevant? Who gets to determine what are my true values based on, based on what I'll click on? I think about Erin and I often are working on projects like building this shed in the backyard, right? So we have tape, tape measures laying around. Sometimes we'll just walk around the house and be like, like measuring distances between ourselves and things. It's meaningless data, but you treat it as though like this is important. Okay, I'm, I'm five feet from that right now. Okay, I'm three feet from you. And I just see tech walking around doing that. Like we're all just walking around with tape measures going like, "Oh, you're three to-- you're three feet away from that and you're five feet away from that," and, and then acting like this is relevant data and that we can build systems that will predict our lives based on random measurements that somebody decided to take, not because those were useful measurements, but because they're easy to take. It's easy to track clicks, so now we have to claim that clicks stand in for true desires. I am so sick of this

Brad: [1:07:18] Yeah, yeah.

Miriam: [1:07:19] You can see I'm going on tangents, but this is how I think.

Brad: [1:07:22] I-- It, it comes back to what we were talking about with this, like, the creative process, and that, that dude that's like, "I'm going to… I hear what you're saying and all, but like, if only everyone would see it my way," or, like, "I, I have the solution,

Miriam: [1:07:41] But I have the data and it's true.

Brad: [1:07:44] yes. Right, right, right. And so I'm going to, like, construct my narrative, like, to entrench my thing and make it so that my answer, my solution, my thing is, is the answer.

Miriam: [1:07:58] So now we're living in a world where the only answer I'm supposed to want is whatever Reddit said but shuffled What? I didn't, I never cared what Reddit said. That's just some guys. I don't know them.

Brad: [1:08:12] this is all, like, very important because it's like, this is the, the shit that I internally, like, wrestle with as someone who has been able to apply a lot of this in ways that like, you know, to, to, to do the split brain process which I've, I've done, j-judge me, I, I guess. Here's like the reality of like, okay, Here's this thing. There's some stuff. There is a there there. I guess it's not but I'm able to use it, and I'm like, Okay, that's it. That's interesting." disagree with power structures and like the, the corporate structures and stuff all around it and whatever. put-- drawing a wedge between here is this, this fundamentally new technology material that can be used in the same way that I've been doing my entire life, which is, okay, here are new technologies, artistic mediums, whatever, and I'm going to like investigate and approach it with like curiosity and see like what I like about it, what I don't like about it. And I g- and, and, and landing in a place where I'm like, "Oh, I've been doing some stuff that I'm like, "Oh, I've had this dream," 'cause I was really bad at running my books for the first say eight years of, of running my business, and I've always wanted to backfill all of this stuff. And I'm like, I know like mentally like what needs to happen. I need to basically go through PDF statements of like old transactions and just reconcile them in Harvest or whatever. And I'm like… and I need like a little program that d-d-- dro-- writes the extractor to extract like the PDF. And so I'm like, "Oh." And like, so like finally like get to this place where I'm like, oh, okay, like, not like throwing it at everything, but I'm like, I'm-- I am, I'm

Miriam: [1:10:10] Right

Brad: [1:10:10] myself going like, "Oh, okay." Like I've like filled in

Miriam: [1:10:14] Yeah.

Brad: [1:10:15] that I've been like kinda sh- bad with before. But I'm like, but yeah, but at the same time, I'm like, I feel really bad and conflicted about everything because I'm like-- I am participating in this stuff, and I am, by way of doing this, I am feeding that beast, and I, I don't like it 'cause

Miriam: [1:10:35] Yeah.

Brad: [1:10:36] agree with it.

Miriam: [1:10:37] I, I don't want to seem like a purist, like, like you can remain pure of s- some system I think for me, it's like I don't blame people for using the tools that are in front of them, but I do blame people for hyping the tools that they know are causing harm. So I'm like, Okay, it's, fits your process writing Python or whatever. I get it. I don't know that I would make the same trade-off, but I get, I get the thinking. but as soon as, as soon as you're like,

Brad: [1:11:12] You can,

Miriam: [1:11:13] "And, and because"

Brad: [1:11:15] I'm fi- I'm fine, I'm fine with it 'cause, like, I, I ju- 'cause, like, I, like, I, like, everything that you've said, I'm like, "Yeah. Y-

Miriam: [1:11:22] Yeah.

Brad: [1:11:23] all of it," and

Miriam: [1:11:23] But it's

Brad: [1:11:24] here I am

Miriam: [1:11:25] it's a particular developer corner to turn. And I- it's making me really frustrated with developers to say, like, "I found some use in, like, having conversations with Claude about my Python," and going from there to, like, "This is intelligent," or, or, "This is," or, "This is even broadly a good for humanity." I don't know whether you're writing your Python faster or not. I just don't find that a… Like, I, I understand why you would do that given the tool put in front of you and given bosses telling you that you have to. Sure, sure. I'm not saying that you're responsible for personally destroying the world. But when you then turn around and say, "And therefore, this does actually have a use, and we can just brush off everything else," suddenly I'm like, "Whoa, where did we… How did we get there?" 'Cause I'm like, yeah, I see ways that I maybe could use this, I guess, but none of them feel worth it to me for, like, mass surveillance and handing over my, my data and my questions to these corporations that are trying to put me out of work and, and really, like, they fundamentally believe that humans should be done away with. I mean, you watch the Peter Thiel interview like "Should… Do you think humans have a place in the future?" And he's like, "Nah." Later, like, he can't answer the question. Like,

Brad: [1:12:57] Yeah.

Miriam: [1:12:58] these guys do not believe what I believe, and they're building a product that fits their beliefs. it is not a neutral… There is some, like, technology at the base of this that's interesting. That's like, "Oh, yeah, we can do statistical, analysis of data," right? But that doesn't mean our data is good, and that doesn't mean we need to surveil the internet and steal all language. We were using machine learning technologies for interesting things before, before we tacked large onto the start of this term, right? We had language models without eating the internet. And they were focused on a task. They were, they were tools that served a purpose a narrow, limited purpose. they were built to do the thing well instead of built to look like an intelligence that does everything mediocre. and then we have to sort of somehow defend it by being like, "Well, it did this one thing okay," and it does feel intelligent in that it uses language pretty well, and it does use language pretty well. That's an interesting thing. Like, we've learned to mechanize language I think that's fascinating.

Brad: [1:14:09] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [1:14:09] But even learning to mechanize language doesn't mean that we have to build a million new data centers and discard all of our global warming goals. Like, we can see that as an interesting technology without adapting what these companies tell us is the, the result of it.

Brad: [1:14:30] Yeah.

Miriam: [1:14:30] they're making that up. And I come in with a very strong like, "Yeah, I'm living in the world as it exists, but also I get to decide which rules I follow and which ones I don't." And I to, I get to, be like, "No, that doesn't work for me." Like, I built my company different from other companies because I don't believe in the shit, right? And we've had consultants come in, and every time they tell us the same thing, which is basically boils down to, "You know you could pay women less than men." And you know, like, that's not how they say it. But always when you boil it down, it's like, "You don't have to pay everybody well. You could pay some people worse." And I'm like, "You're right, and that's the world we live in. But that doesn't mean I'm going to embrace it. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not cool with that."

Brad: [1:15:16] Yeah

Miriam: [1:15:17] like, yeah, I know that that's how you run a company and that that's helpful for your bottom line and all, all sorts of things. But I get to decide if that's a trade-off that I'm interested in.

Brad: [1:15:29] Yeah

Miriam: [1:15:30] more and more I'm not interested.

Brad: [1:15:32] There's a number of things that came up. It's like, one, you're sort of talking about like your own values and thresholds and like your agency to be able to to, decide whether or not to do, to do something. And like, that's definitely part of like the narrative that we, that I see a lot is like, here is like the inevitability and so, and that inevitability translates to a rolling over and, and an acceptance and an embrace of a

Miriam: [1:16:04] Right.

Brad: [1:16:04] of the, of the entirety of it, right? And I

Miriam: [1:16:07] Yeah

Brad: [1:16:08] where, where there is a-- I'm not necessarily convinced it's an in-an inevitability. I, I am convinced in, through my own experience with it that I'm like, oh, I, I see some value there, but I'm able to hopefully draw that line of like, well, that doesn't mean that I'm like suddenly like cool with like all of this stuff, and I wanna

Miriam: [1:16:31] Right

Brad: [1:16:31] part to like help sort of like say, "Hey, if there is a there there, if there is utility to this, then it's beholden on-- like, like the

Miriam: [1:16:42] Yeah.

Brad: [1:16:43] on

Miriam: [1:16:43] Yeah. Yes.

Brad: [1:16:45] for a

Miriam: [1:16:46] Yes. The more utility you see, the more it's on you to fix it.

Brad: [1:16:51] And that's, and that's the thing that I think is just utterly and completely just despicable when it comes to those people at the very top, is how they are to just, like, talk about this stuff as, like, a panacea, as, like, the end-all be-all, and to do literally everything to just skirt or just circumvent or, like, not absorb or even receive any

Miriam: [1:17:20] Right

Brad: [1:17:21] of it. It's like, that's so fucking shitty. It's like, like you're, you're allowed to say, "Yeah, we have something," and like, "Yes, also these environmental impacts," and, "Yes, all of, like, these things are also true." And like, "We, we want to do this." Like, like that's, that's available. That is an option. But again, these people have de-demonstrated again and again and again and

Miriam: [1:17:45] Yeah

Brad: [1:17:46] that that isn't the case. So it's like very clearly my, my hope is that there is there-- that there is room, like anything, when there's three companies or whatever that are kind of vying for something, that there is like this ability for-- there is room for people to say, "Here's the nugget of the technology," and like

Miriam: [1:18:06] Right

Brad: [1:18:07] kind of do this in a way that isn't fully reprehensible and whatever. And that's the stuff that, like, I want to see more of. And, but, but yeah, as, as somebody who's out there, like, kind of like I am participating in this, but I also like want to say like, yeah, I'm t- continue to be uneasy about it, especially with just feeling like I am just kinda going, "Ah." Yeah, but it's-- I don't wanna dimini-- like it, it's, it's a very interesting place to be, to be like, kind of like crave almost like the, like your perspective and like other people that are like pretty adamantly like opposed to it because it's like like agree with all of it. I just am like able to like try to navigate

Miriam: [1:18:53] Yeah

Brad: [1:18:53] where I'm like, yeah, like, but this thing did help me do this stuff. And

Miriam: [1:18:58] Sure

Brad: [1:18:58] I'm seeing, I'm seeing, like, real benefits, like, the most interesting thing is I'm like, oh yeah, I'm, like, doing it so that, like, I don't have to do it in, like, the future. I'm, like, filling in, like, all, like, the little holes in my foundation and then I'm at this place where I'm like, "Cool, well, I have all, like, the pieces that I need. Like, I don't need to keep, like, throwing myself at this thing." It's like, it's almost, like, kinda like, yeah, I know that doing a bug bomb to get my-- the roaches out of my house- Mm. it's a bad it's, it's not the best for the environment or whatever, but it's like a single-- a one-time use. I don't know. May-maybe I'm,

Miriam: [1:19:33] Yeah. I mean,

Brad: [1:19:34] I'm

Miriam: [1:19:35] I

Brad: [1:19:35] I'm trying not to, like, make, like, excuses for it, but to, like, literally, like, just sit in the discomfort of this, like, place where I'm, like, simultaneously seeing the benefits from it, but also not trying to tip over into the excusing a lot of the, the crap that comes with it. I don't know.

Miriam: [1:19:55] it's difficult from my perspective because the people who I don't know, claim a nuanced view often only express the, what they're getting out of it and sort of defensively. "But, but I'm getting these things out of it." And I'm like, "Okay Great. Cool. Where is the part where you're fighting? Where is the part where you're saying it has to be different? how come it's only those of us who are like, "Mm, I don't, I don't need this"? How come it's only us that are willing to, be like, "This has to, this has to be better. This has to be better to the world and to other people"? it's lonely out here seeing only, the only critiques coming from people who only have critiques.

Brad: [1:20:43] Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam: [1:20:44] that's, that's frustrating. And it's, I think it particularly frustrates me with developers. I'm like, I'm like, I have seen my entire job in this career has been, has been steering clients away from things that I think are dangerous. Um, Has been like, I know that that's what people expect, but that's bad, and we shouldn't perpetuate it.

Brad: [1:21:06] Yeah

Miriam: [1:21:07] and to me, that's the whole purpose of design and like, and like an expertise in design, is that I can look at something and be like, "No, but that's harm- I know it helps your bottom line, but it's harmful. and we're not gonna, we're not gonna help you perpetuate that just because it helps your bottom line." And I feel like I see that all, all through my life, just so many things that would help my bottom line on a scale from downright scams to, to not quite as scammy, but sort of considered normal, but sort of a little bit scammy,

Brad: [1:21:43] Yeah,

Miriam: [1:21:43] There's all sorts of like, get rich quick and I can decide not to do them, even though,

Brad: [1:21:49] Yeah

Miriam: [1:21:50] I don't know, they, that would help me in some way. I can be like, "Yeah, but at what cost?" And I think, yeah, I think as a designer, my question or my, my facilitating with clients is always around the like, "Yeah, nope, the costs aren't worth it on that one. Let's, let's steer you towards something that is not a, a manipulative pattern. Um, Let's steer you towards more humane software. how, how can we do that?" And so, then it's absurd to me to see the industry go like, "Well, I know that there's problems, but it helped me in a way." And I'm like, "What, what's, what's even our job here? What are we, what are we doing if that's as far as we can get?"

Brad: [1:22:34] Yeah.

Miriam: [1:22:34] I don't understand it.

Brad: [1:22:36] Well, and it's-- And, and I think that you're touching on it really well in saying it's like, oh, there's, there's like the bottom line as like the, the goal, but then you also said like the word like humane. And whenever people talk about like, "Oh yeah, here are these like things like th-this stuff will like help build a better world," and like, and it's like, well, okay, what does it look like to apply this stuff to building a more humane world? And like, what specifically does that look like, and who's doing that work? And, and I th- 'cause I agree with you that it's like when you see kind of people that are to it or, or saying like, "I'm not going to cross that line," and like, you see like that, the sort of critiquing criticism rightly coming from those people. I think that this is where like you have like the coalitions people that are like, oh… 'Cause the, risk with that is that it's like, oh, well, people, those people don't understand the good stuff that it can get, and so therefore they get written off as like, they just like don't understand. Meanwhile, like there's a lot of really brilliant technologists and designers and people that, that do the grain of what this technology is without having to sort of like g- have the, the first-hand experience with it. But I also think that there is like that coalition with like the people who are using it, but also that still have a soul, I guess, and, and, and are like, "Yes," like, "We, we care about this and wanna sort of like steer it in the right direction." And like I'm, I'm very grateful to know some of those people that are like, "Oh, cool. Here's what I could do with like a local model," or like, "Here's like where this is going," and like, "Oh, this-- If this is like how this stuff is trending, here's how we could peel this stuff away to like

Miriam: [1:24:27] Right

Brad: [1:24:27] like some of the stuff." I'm like, "Hell yeah." Like, that's, that's good stuff, and I like wanna see more of it. I, I don't have enough of like a grasp on like the, the technology of it, so like kinda like downstream from that. But just like standards of

Miriam: [1:24:41] yeah.

Brad: [1:24:42] I kinda see like what you're doing, but like I'm, I'm happy to like follow suit like when these like kind of saner and more humane alternatives and stuff like arise, and I wanna like do my part to like kinda help promote that and

Miriam: [1:24:57] I want people

Brad: [1:24:58] so.

Miriam: [1:24:59] questions like, "Could, could a smaller model that's not ba- built on surveillance do this?

Brad: [1:25:06] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [1:25:06] could, could I script it?" I think somebody on our team had this idea of, like, a website that's like, "Can I script it?" Uh, And you put in, like, what you were gonna ask the chatbot to do, and, like, if you can write a Python script that does it, write the Python script. Like, that's … It's, we don't need to always, we don't need to always use the most expensive thing just because it has the least friction. yeah, that's not the world I want to live in. I understand that there are advantages to mass surveillance, mass policing, and mass incarceration, and I still think those things are wrong, and I don't wanna be part of them. I don't think the trade-offs are worth it and I'm gonna keep saying that. And I don't, I don't like a world where we go, "Well, but there's something… it sometimes helps, and therefore, we can brush aside everything else.

Brad: [1:26:02] Yeah.

Miriam: [1:26:02] it helped… I got mine." Uh, that's, uh, it's n- it's not the world I want. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep questioning it.

Brad: [1:26:11] And there's, there's certain things it's like you'd really have to… what's been described as like the original sin was like it just kinda eating the internet without anybody's permission, and then just being like, " Well, this

Miriam: [1:26:24] Oops.

Brad: [1:26:24] come at me. Yeah. Oops." Right? And it's like, well, that happened, and there ain't no going back. You know, there's no time machine for that. But then there are, like,

Miriam: [1:26:34] Yeah, but there like, there is like putting these companies out of business. That's a thing. That's a thing, and it's a thing we're allowed to do. We're allowed societally to do that. And I mean, like, I can't just do that on my own, and you can't just do that on your own. But we can as a society be like, "No, that's out of bounds." We do that all the time. I mean, we we have, no trespassing signs. Like, that's much more absurd. But like we can say things are out of bounds societally. We can do that. And we don't have to be like, "Just because you have all the money, y- I guess you get to make the rules now."

Brad: [1:27:10] yeah, but yeah, like, so, so, so there's that and, and 100%, even though that happened, that's not like, like a forgivable thing. And it's like, yeah, like let's, let's-- here's bottles that aren't that way and, and let's, let's get out there and promote them. It-- much like the, you know, the Fire foxes of the world and, and the rest of them and stuff like that. It's like there, there are these things and these abilities to like kind of create these, these alternate structures that like give you the same benefit for--

Miriam: [1:27:40] Mm-hmm

Brad: [1:27:41] a lot of like the crap that comes along for the ride. And then there, and then there are these things that are just like, okay, well, how about let's not like take these environmental costs as like, as a given, and are there things that can be done to pressure things?

Miriam: [1:27:59] href

Brad: [1:27:59] there is infrastructure, a, a data center exists or it doesn't, and some of those things even are not binaries. It's like, well, what does it look like to actually like go, what if these things were not just like these coming in under a

Miriam: [1:28:16] Yeah.

Brad: [1:28:16] company and like just suddenly just being erected with a big middle

Miriam: [1:28:20] Yeah,

Brad: [1:28:21] But what if this was built in a more communal way? And what if like people actually cared about this? Like it's, it's like,

Miriam: [1:28:29] Yeah,

Brad: [1:28:30] it, it

Miriam: [1:28:30] I think that's interesting

Brad: [1:28:31] the all or nothing, the,

Miriam: [1:28:34] Yeah.

Brad: [1:28:35] thing. It's like, like there's these

Miriam: [1:28:36] But also

Brad: [1:28:37] it's like walk it back to, to like more reasonable like things, and that requires like these companies actually like having to be

Miriam: [1:28:47] Yeah.

Brad: [1:28:48] and that's happening now where it's

Miriam: [1:28:50] What I s-

Brad: [1:28:51] things are-- they're, they're, they're being forced to be confronted with like communities that are like, Hey, yeah, we're not going to take this." And they're like, "Ugh," like… It's like the

Miriam: [1:29:00] Yeah, I think,

Brad: [1:29:01] of like dissent

Miriam: [1:29:02] yeah, I think, I think it's interesting to ask those questions, but I think it's also good to remember that, like, we constantly stack up current harms against hypothetical gains in the future and act like the hypothetical gains outweigh actual current harms. And I, I get frustrated that society-wide, not just around this one thing, but sort of like, I mean, it's a little bit trickle-down theory is that, right? It's like, "If we give the billionaires all of our money now, maybe it will come back to us." Which is sort of shown to be absurd over and over again. But,

Brad: [1:29:44] Yeah.

Miriam: [1:29:45] we have to be able to say, No, actually, the harm is current and, and has to be addressed." And then we can start talking about, like, once we've talked about ways to reduce the harm, then we can talk about ways we want to achieve those, those gains and, and actually put focus on them. Like, until, until, s- nobody's using a large language model to cure cancer, whatever. But, like, until, Like, show me your work on curing cancer and show me how this work comes out of it. I, I wanna know that there's actually a direct connection here, and we're talking about something real, and we're not just, we're not just saying, "But but maybe, maybe someday," and saying, you know, "Maybe someday we'll solve the climate part." So, like, we know…

Brad: [1:30:30] Yeah

Miriam: [1:30:31] is another thing. L- like, w- we regularly point to AI and be like, "Maybe it could solve this problem," and it's like, we already know how to solve that problem. We know how to deal with climate change. Like, the problem we're having is not that we don't know what to do.

Brad: [1:30:44] Yeah,

Miriam: [1:30:45] that people are refusing to do it.

Brad: [1:30:47] Yeah,

Miriam: [1:30:48] and I see, I see AI as a part of that. It's, it's just people again being like, "Nah, we can't do that climate change thing. We can't do that climate change thing because it, it writes my Python 10 minutes faster." And I'm like, " I don't c- I don't, I do not fucking care about you writing your Python 10 minutes faster." Like, it, that is not my concern in the world.

Brad: [1:31:12] Yeah

Miriam: [1:31:13] I w- I want to stop going out in 100-degree weather every day. What are we doing here? let's solve the actual problem instead of inventing new things that we think hypothetically might give us a new answer to a question that we've known the answer to for y- what are we, what are we doing? What are we doing? And I know the answer to why can't we. It's, it's profit. Profit is why can't we. But

Brad: [1:31:34] Well, yeah, and, and that's, that's a damn-- It's a freaking hard thing to, up against. But I think that you're rightly, I think, sort of pointing out there's like the collective action that all like kind of is, is coordinated to its power o-over us. And, and I think that, that's like a very important point to, to take to heart, which is, it's like, yes, like what power structures are we giving our, our money to and like what are we like kind of pushing on and stuff. And, and I also think your-- what you said is, is also very potent, which is there's kind of… storytelling creatures, right? And, and we, we get moved by narratives, and the the narratives of those kind of like wishful thinking like, "In the future, you know, we'll all have flying cars and universal basic income." I think that it's right to sort of flip it on its head and say, like, "Here are these thresholds that if you earn, if you're able to demonstrate the cancer-curing stuff," or like, "If we, if we like kind of get to this point," or if like, if you're able to sort of say, "Here's," you said, "all of these things that were spelled out that need to be done in the climate change department." And if you're saying that this could help with that, if you help that this is like moving the needle here, well, then that unlocks maybe more, you know. So, so yeah. So like unregulated, unfettered, like

Miriam: [1:33:06] yeah

Brad: [1:33:07] based on like wishful thinking, that, that can't, that

Miriam: [1:33:11] Well, and also we have to be able to separate, we have to be able to separate the technology from the products. We have to be able to say like, "Yes, scientists are using machine learning." That's not the same as-- like, they're not using ChatGPT to fold proteins. those are different things, and we can't just be like, "Well, it's all AI." It's not. It's, it's not all the same thing. They're doing very different things with very different technologies that we've just arbitrarily given this shared name to and whatever. Uh, Maybe that name is a useful shorthand, but, like, one doesn't excuse the other. We don't need, we don't need mass surveillance to train a model on proteins and learn something. Like, that's-- these are different things at different scales. I mean, it's what I appreciated about some of the, like Timnit Gebru and, and Emily Bender and all of them. They're, they were AI researchers. They are AI researchers. Their whole critique was like drop the large. The l- the large is unnecessary. These tools are useful. The large is unnecessary. It's just surveillance. It's just centralizing.

Brad: [1:34:22] Centralization, yeah.

Miriam: [1:34:23] And we don't, we don't need to bring that along with the benefits of, of the underlying technology. And I find that a really useful… I mean, I think also of like, I connect all these things. Like, I think about prison abolitionists, you know, and the ar- the argument is we should imagine a world where we don't need prisons. And then you might say like, "Okay, well, there's some problems with that," right? Um, like, what do we do about these cases? And they're like, "Great, those are good questions." But, like, what if we start by imagining a world where we don't need prisons, and then every decision we make is attempting to move towards that world? And, and we just slowly move towards it in whatever small steps we can. Uh, and we're not saying that we have to, like, shut down every prison today and everybody is just walking around suddenly. Like, we understand that we need other things to deal with conflict and deal with people that do harm, and we have to find other structures, right? But, it's sort of a, in my mind, it's this, it's this breaking down of revolutionary versus knob… What's the other term that people use for just fiddling with the knobs

Brad: [1:35:39] i-

Miriam: [1:35:40] of

Brad: [1:35:41] or, or like,

Miriam: [1:35:41] or,

Brad: [1:35:42] I

Miriam: [1:35:42] or, or, Th-there's a, there's other options here. We can, we can imagine something revolutionary, and we can just make sure that every small step we take is towards that goal. And that's where I look at AI and I'm like, it's, I, I don't see it as taking steps towards a goal I believe in. I see uses that could be handy as side quests, sure. I don't see it moving us towards the goal I'm interested in. I want to solve those problems too, but, like, we're designers. We can think of other ways to do it.

Brad: [1:36:16] Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam: [1:36:17] we don't have to narrow down and be like, "Well, somebody solved it. Somebody solved it. Now, now we just do the thing that they, that they sold us. It's done. It's over

Brad: [1:36:29] I love how you, you said it. It's, it's that, and it-- to use, sorry, like the, like corporate, like client services speak, it's like you have to plant that flag in the sand, like off in the distance, and then go, "We're going that way." And

Miriam: [1:36:43] Yeah

Brad: [1:36:44] what you're describing is not the job of like the AI companies, although they very much should have way more of a conscience. But it's, th-this, this is where politics and just like societal in general, like, like society in general, have to go, "Here's the kind of future that we want to see."

Miriam: [1:37:04] Right. Right.

Brad: [1:37:06] called leadership. That's called vision.

Miriam: [1:37:08] Yeah

Brad: [1:37:08] like, here's what, here's what a more just, a more humane, a, a better world looks like. And to paint

Miriam: [1:37:15] Alright

Brad: [1:37:16] and then you collectively start taking steps towards that. And then

Miriam: [1:37:22] Yeah

Brad: [1:37:22] there are, there are guardrails, there are regulations, there are rules, there are laws, there's are like whatever, all of like those other things. But, but more importantly, not-- forget about like the laws and the punitive side of it, but just the incentives and the, the, the picture of, of a hope and going, "Hey, it's better over here." And that's why I get so frustrated with like, literally like any political discussion because it's so devoid of

Miriam: [1:37:50] Right

Brad: [1:37:50] long-term vision, any long-term thinking, any long-term like anything, that it's just like, it's all just so petty and so just like, what, how, what mood did I wake-- It's, it just feels so childish.

Miriam: [1:38:02] and it's so,

Brad: [1:38:04] like, where's the thing? Like, where's the thing that just is like, " Miriam: Yeah.

Brad: [1:38:07] at us. We're the most advanced species supposedly, that has all of these materials in front of us. We have nothing but and riches and technologies and v-vehicles

Miriam: [1:38:20] the far side of the moon. Yeah Yeah, yeah.

Brad: [1:38:23] are we

Miriam: [1:38:23] Yeah,

Brad: [1:38:23] are we

Miriam: [1:38:24] but I think, I think part of it is a, like, a fractioning of us, and then, like, we don't see our place in the power structure. So then we go like, "Well, here's the things I've got. How do I reduce friction in my own life with the tools that are in front of me?" And I get that instinct, and also, I think things keep getting worse if we, if we're just all trying to remove personal frictions without accounting for the externalities. Like, that, that just takes us constantly downhill, and we don't see a way out unless we, we have to envision a way out, and we have to envision a world where there is some friction in our lives because that's part of what it means to collaborate, and that's part of what it means to be part of a society. And I, I guess this is, you know, trying to pull it all back around to, to where we started. Like, to me, that is the collaborative thing, right? It's that I couldn't build these shows on my own. I couldn't imagine them on my own. What gets me excited about a performance is when it's something I couldn't have imagined. Like, we got there by all of us imagining different things and then figuring out how they fit together and, and, like, building something together and not just following the rules or what was given to us, but, like, each of us bringing our personal wild selves and imagining something new. And I'm like, "We can do this with the world." This is a thing we can do. This is-- And this is specifically supposed to be our expertise in tech. This is supposed to be the expertise that we bring, is like, the world can be better. We can imagine something better, and we can not just accept what came, but we can, we can invent something else. And how is that industry looking at a tool and going like, "Well, I don't know. Guess we're stuck with it"? What are we talking about? Like, we're not stuck with it. We know how to, we know how to build tools too.

Brad: [1:40:40] Yeah.

Miriam: [1:40:40] can imagine better tools, and we can build them. So yeah, I don't get mad at people sometimes using a chatbot or whatever if they find it whatever. I d- Like, that's not-- We're not here for purity politics. But I do get mad at developers who act like we're not developers who act like we have to accept what was given to us as the truth. I guess I'm a little-- I j-just-- It struck me, me and Sandra, the Outbird, one of the Outbird designers we went to a meetup. This was years ago, and we walked in a little bit late, and there was a presentation happening, and the person on stage was saying, " Well, design has been solved. Facebook solved it, so now we're just rearranging the pieces." And I feel like that's where we are as an industry, is like we've accepted that there's like a right, there's a right answer. Somebody else figures it out. It's backed by data, and I, I come in and I fee-- I'm like, I think that data is, I think that data is just some bullshit. I think

Brad: [1:41:41] Yeah

Miriam: [1:41:41] somebody just walked around with a tape measure and then claimed that I should care. and I, I just don't believe this. I, I can't believe our industry is acting like this

Brad: [1:41:52] here's my attempt too to pull all of this together. I think that your How you framed ability to sort of like teach and facilitate and sort of ultimately like empower other people to just like the, the creative power and, you know, agency that, that they have, that is, that is really that's the facilitation. And, and that's, I think, like what our, what our industry needs right now is people like you and hopefully I try to do my part to like help people understand how much power and agency they have,

Miriam: [1:42:29] Right

Brad: [1:42:30] have to just sort of like accept what's handed to them. It's like you're a creative professional. Like you , you

Miriam: [1:42:37] Yeah.

Brad: [1:42:37] to, to imagine a different world and that, and that we can like make decisions and that you actually have… When we talk about design having a seat at the table, it's like you, you exercise that by saying, "Hey, let's not do that. Let's do this other thing i-instead." Or, "What if we did this thing that none of us have been thinking about?" Or like, "What questions aren't we answering?" Or like,

Miriam: [1:43:04] Right. Right

Brad: [1:43:04] we have so much freedom and agency and ability

Miriam: [1:43:10] Right.

Brad: [1:43:11] capacity, we just need to start actually exercising it. And I think that that's, that's-- these are the, the things that I, I hope, like with this show and just like beyond, I like w- I want more people to understand that they have this

Miriam: [1:43:26] Yeah

Brad: [1:43:26] I, I'm sure you get, y-you get it as well, just like you were describing earlier, like the people who co- approach you at the market saying like, "Oh, I'm not creative like that," or

Miriam: [1:43:34] Right, right

Brad: [1:43:36] the only difference between and them is that you're able to overcome that, that like whatever weird external voice, it-- that thing, "I can't do that," and then you just do it anyways. And wouldn't you know, then you end up doing

Miriam: [1:43:55] Then you can do it.

Brad: [1:43:56] Yeah. Yeah. But,

Miriam: [1:43:58] Yeah.

Brad: [1:43:58] that

Miriam: [1:43:59] Yeah

Brad: [1:43:59] lesson, that same lesson that comes to just like self-expression, which is a great lesson in and

Miriam: [1:44:04] Right

Brad: [1:44:06] also applies to our ability to enact

Miriam: [1:44:09] Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: [1:44:11] organizational structures, within like weird power dynamics, within our social groups, within our families, within everything. Like we are, we are-- You have you

Miriam: [1:44:21] Yeah, you're

Brad: [1:44:22] to, to sort of like be directional in like

Miriam: [1:44:25] yeah. Yeah

Brad: [1:44:26] If you're frustrated with things, if you're just like, "I, I'm scared, I'm not sure. I d- if I speak up, if I raise my hand, like I'm gonna get…" It's like we, we have the ability to just say, "Hey, maybe we should do it this other way." And people go,

Miriam: [1:44:40] Yeah.

Brad: [1:44:40] right. Okay.

Miriam: [1:44:41] Yeah, totally. Totally. I think, yeah, I mean, I feel like, I feel like that's maybe the central point of my career is, like, you can-- I know, I know sometimes it's gonna be harder. You're gonna be picking the harder path, but you can make it up. You have agency. You're allowed to take the harder path. Sometimes it's really rewarding to take the harder path. Just avoiding friction is not, is not the happy path. Push, push on things. Believe in things. know the world that you want and know the careers that you want and claim your agency.

Brad: [1:45:17] Hell yeah. That's a great way, that's a great way, that's a great exclamation point to, to end it on, I think. So, we did talk at least a little bit about music through the lens of, of your theater company, but what, what music do you want more people to know about?

Miriam: [1:45:33] Yeah, that was an interesting question. I haven't been listening to a lot of really new music lately. Like, I haven't been discovering things except, like, old things, like discovering the Funkadelics, and you're like, "More people don't need to know about the Funkadelics." Th- the plenty of people know about them or whatever. So that's not my answer. There's lots of bands like that, that I'm like, "Oh, well, I discovered them recently," but they're not recent discoveries. And I didn't discover them that recently. But,

Brad: [1:46:01] should listen to P-Funk though, so just straight up.

Miriam: [1:46:04] yeah,

Brad: [1:46:04] me.

Miriam: [1:46:05] just Megabrain, Megabrain, you start there and work your way out. yeah, so then I was thinking, "Well, I've got some friends that I think make really excellent music, so you should maybe check them out." I think particularly Emily Rogers. Check out Emily Rogers. Haunting just, just excellent. But yeah

Brad: [1:46:24] What, like

Miriam: [1:46:25] not cheerful.

Brad: [1:46:27] Nah.

Miriam: [1:46:27] I mean, they're just, they're just, uh… She has this beautiful voice, and she's an excellent guitarist, and I think it's maybe her partner that's mainly playing with her and a, a few other people 'cause there's a, there's drums and other stuff. yeah, it's these-- it's just sort of beautiful, haunting, sad songs. I knew her in college, high school and college, and she was playing, like, folk music. Like, one person with an acoustic guitar, folk music, pretty straightforward, and I was like, "Sure, you got a great voice. You're g- you're good." And then, like, I heard her several years later putting out these just amazing haunting songs that just sounded n- nothing like… I mean, like, clearly inspired by her, her experience and her history and whatever, but

Brad: [1:47:17] Amazing.

Miriam: [1:47:17] a, a unique voice. So I-- Yeah, check out, check out Emily Rogers. She's great

Brad: [1:47:23] I love it. I love it. Amazing.

Miriam: [1:47:25] playing around Pittsburgh. She's in Pittsburgh, so maybe

Brad: [1:47:29] ba- Yeah, I was gonna ask 'cause, like, is she,

Miriam: [1:47:31] Yeah.

Brad: [1:47:33] Is

Miriam: [1:47:33] Last I talked to her, she was in Pittsburgh. I don't know of her moving out of Pittsburgh, so

Brad: [1:47:38] amazing. Well,

Miriam: [1:47:39] she's still there

Brad: [1:47:41] Well, hell yeah. I will definitely-- I'm going to

Miriam: [1:47:44] Yeah.

Brad: [1:47:45] also trying to like bring together like in like one big like kinda playlist and stuff for

Miriam: [1:47:50] yeah. yeah. Oh, cool

Brad: [1:47:52] Well, well, yeah, but she's local to me. I, I was like, "Oh, is she in Denver?" But, so it

Miriam: [1:47:57] Yeah, I was just looking. I d- I don't see any super recent albums since, like, 2021, so I, I haven't heard what she's doing in the last couple years. But I really love her stuff

Brad: [1:48:07] Amazing. Amazing. And where can people follow along with, with you and, and your work and across all of your different creative

Miriam: [1:48:16] Yeah, that's a hard question. I mean, you know, uh, Oddbird for web development, uh, that's oddbird.net, and grapefruitlab.com is the theater company, uh, including our prison work. I have miriamsuzanne.com, which I every once in a while try to remember to post something but I'm distracted by a lot of different things. Teacup Gorilla is the band. and to me they're all the same, and they all, they all integrate, they all play together.

Brad: [1:48:47] Yeah. It's, it's collectively your, your authentic self, so.

Miriam: [1:48:50] Yeah, exactly

Brad: [1:48:51] but then also quick plug because, like, we've been chatting a little bit 'cause you're also, you created some courses some CSS courses, so I wanna plug that too

Miriam: [1:49:02] Yeah, so courses.oddbird.net, and it's linked from the Oddbird website, too. But I have a Poetic CSS course. I'm still in the middle of filming it. I-it's-- yeah, again, it's that, like, that teaching thing. I just find it so exciting to, yeah, figure out how to explain these concepts in CSS. It's really like whether you're writing the CSS or reviewing the CSS, a lot of people are out there trying to cobble together, like, these independent properties that they've heard of, right? And every article covers one property, and you do your best to sort of guess how they're all gonna fit together. And this course

Brad: [1:49:40] Mm-hmm.

Miriam: [1:49:41] is about how they all fit together. It's really-- it's like a systems view of CSS. How was it designed? how-- what is the, the mental model that the working group has of CSS? Like, what's-- how do you view CSS as a consistent whole, so you're not guessing at properties to throw in? You understand what the system is how things interact. Like CSS has timing to it. Like, things happen before other things and if you understand those timings, a lot of the day-to-day gotchas just become like, oh, that's just computed values inherit, and they inherit before variables resolve. And if we understand the order that these things happen and how it's all supposed to work as a system, we don't have to, we don't have to guess over and over until something seems to work in our browser. I'm not teaching you every word in the dictionary. I'm teaching you how to structure a poem how to use language that you need

Brad: [1:50:50] I, I've learned so much about CSS from you. So it's like, what's weird, what's weird to say is, like, I've been writing CSS for more than half of my life, and so

Miriam: [1:51:00] She's…

Brad: [1:51:01] who I,

Miriam: [1:51:02] Me too, probably. Yeah.

Brad: [1:51:04] is it weird? But I'm like, I've had to unlearn a bunch of

Miriam: [1:51:08] Ja

Brad: [1:51:09] and, and I, I owe a lot to you for kinda like dismantling a lot of like the, the kind of like old ways of doing things, and it's like through your writing and your conference talks and now your courses, it's like I'm, I'm able to kinda be like, "Oh, okay, this is gonna go easier because this, this language has come such a long way."

Miriam: [1:51:30] Right

Brad: [1:51:31] so like I would recommend it for people like, like just learning it, like, and to like learn it right, kinda right out of the gate. But like for me, old dogs learning new tricks are like just like more with the grain of how the stuff ought to be written. Like, a-and that's, that's, I think, like, a real testament to you kinda like straddling that line between being able to, like, operate at that, like, spec level, but also being a practitioner. So, so thank you. And, and everyone, you should definitely buy these courses.

Miriam: [1:52:02] Please do. I would love to be able to make more, and it's a, it's a scary time out there for people creating courses. So if it's something you're interested in, it's something I'm excited to help you learn. And we've got, like, a Discord channel where you can ask questions. Come to me if you have questions. That's great. I just want, I want, I want people not to be scared of CSS in the way that I think a lot of people have been scared of CSS. I want you to know that it's really learnable. It's really manageable if you learn how to manage it. And, and there's sort of, there's no, there's no shortcuts. Like, I think that's, you know, part of this conversation, is that, like, everybody's looking for shortcuts, and I just don't believe that shortcuts exist. So, like, if you want a garden without weeds, you have to weed the garden. That's the, that's how you get there. And the same is true with CSS or JavaScript or Python or whatever you're writing. You have to learn, learn how to do it and then, and then you can. But, uh, yeah, and I'm excited down the road. Like, if this one goes well, I'd be excited to dive into, like, more narrow topics. But I sort of realized, like, if I do a layout course, I still need to teach you first how it all fits together, and if I do an animation course, I still have to teach you how it all fits together. If I do a colors course, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, I wanted this one out first. I wanted to answer the question, like, how does it all, how does it all… What's the system? How do we build? What's the systems built into it, and then how do we build systems around it? Naming and organizing conventions, all that. And then, yeah. Yeah, if enough of you buy this one, I get to make another one that's, like, grids or something, you know? Like, when to use grid versus Flexbox or those sorts of more in the, in the weeds of particular features courses. I would love to do that.

Brad: [1:53:50] Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Well, well, thank you. Thanks again

Miriam: [1:53:55] Yeah. Thank you

Brad: [1:53:56] all of this. So, yeah, until next time. Hopefully I get to see you in person soon. It's

Miriam: [1:54:01] Yeah, that'd be great

Brad: [1:54:02] but all right. Well, take care. Thanks so much for

Miriam: [1:54:04] All right.

Brad: [1:54:05] thanks everybody for listening

Miriam: [1:54:06] Thank you