 It's on. Amazing. Guten Tag, Texas. I'd like to set the mood with a short clip, if that's alright. There should be some sound down. This is the German close guard. What are you thinking about? Well, I hope that sets the mood. Hello and thank you for joining me here today. This is the room where we saved the world. My plan was to bring a towel just in case something goes wrong. Oh my God, when I asked people yesterday, nobody seemed to get a reference of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so how many people actually read the book? Sophia, okay. Well, I left my towel at home, so let's just hope for the best. So what is world? World is a common term for everything that goes on here on planet Earth. Human civilization, life, all of our history, the world as we know it. From a more philosophical point of view, world may also refer to the temporary existence of mankind, our nature of becoming and being, reality. All the things that happen to be meaningfully relevant to us, the so-called ontological universe, the world we live in. So on this slide shows a picture of the world, more precisely planet Earth, as seen by the Apollo 17 spacecraft crew on their way to the moon on December 7 in 1972. The blue marble, as it's called, is the first image that captured the entire globe in one single frame, and it became the most iconic and widely spread image in human history. A symbol of globalism, humanity and furthermore, modern environmental activism. So seeing Earth from this perspective, this tiny fragile ball of life hanging in the dark vastness of space, a rather hostile environment, and solely protected by a thin layer, which we call our atmosphere, you can't help but feel, um, comfortless awe. Many astronauts report a profound shift in awareness while viewing Earth from orbit. National boundaries seem to vanish, conflicts between people seem obsolete, the fragility of natural systems becomes apparent. A phenomenon that is also known as the overview effect. And it describes the prompt understanding that we are all in this together, and it should create a sense of an agency to take care of this environment. However, it's kind of hard to get an overview from down here, right? So earlier in September, I had an incredible opportunity to attend a thing called Hedge, which is a four-day annual retreat in the mountains of Big Sky in Montana. You're supposed to bring bear spray, that was the first, and it's for a bunch of creative types. It was a stellar mix of solid inspiration and hot tubs, and I'm just going to leave it at that. One of the brilliant individuals that I met there was Michelle Teller, who's an astronomer at NASA, and here's a pro-tip. If you ever meet an astronomer, don't miss the chance to have a chat. That's Michelle. And I would like to tell you a story that she shared at Hedge. Maybe you remember it the next time you stand on the clear night sky. So a star is not more or less than a cloud of dust collapsing on the force of gravity. This compressed space, the body of a star, is the birthplace of every element on our periodic table. Oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, etc. So when the core of a star collapses completely, it's the most violent act in the universe. A supernova explosion, the death of a star. And it's also the only instant where iron is created. Now, does anybody want to have a guess where the bright red color of the blood in our veins comes from? Iron, exactly. So in conclusion, we are dead stars looking back up at the sky. We are the bloody universe. And if an astronomer tells you that, you better believe it. So that should make us feel pretty good about ourselves, I guess. And I'm hoping we can keep the spirits up for another 20 minutes while I'm trying to get to the bottom of this runtime error. There will be time for questions. And while this seems maybe like an excellent opportunity to do a life coding session, trust me, that would end in disaster and be complete madness. Instead, I'd like to start with a life-saving session. And a two starts in a terminal, more precisely Terminal A at Tegel Airport in Berlin. That's where I live at the moment. Berlin is 5,582 miles and a very confusing time zones away from San Antonio. Equally confusing are the varying calculations of the amount of CO2 that long-haul air travel carries with it. My personal share in this regard apparently comes up to more or less one ton, which matches the weight of 10 baby elephants. Being responsible for the creation of 10 carbon baby elephants is still weighing heavy on my shoulders, and that's why I skipped out of the 5K this morning, sorry. But maybe it was the jet lag as well. So planting trees seems to be a popular approach to erase this guilt. And according to one of the many online services that provide this type of carbon relief, I'd need to buy 5 average-sized oaks, $20 each. They are cheaper services, but are kind of on premium, free-range organic oaks. Since there were 350 other passengers on my flight, I'd like to invite you guys to jump on your devices and buy oaks with me. Precisely 1,750. We could erase the carbon emissions of an entire aircraft this afternoon. Does that sound like a good idea? Frowns? Anyone? That's good, because, well, it's quite hard to tell whether carbon offsetting resembles an infinite loop or leads to deadlock, really. Either way, it seems to be a rather unlikely holistic solution. Atmospheric concerns related to carbon dioxide, water vapor, particle emissions, the results of transporting human beings through the clouds while burning precious post-model dinosaur remains is not a simple problem. It's a wicked problem. So wicked problems are defined as messy, circular, and chaotic. Solutions are never true, never false. They can be assessed as good, good enough, or bad. Planting trees would actually be slightly not bad. But however, every attempt of a solution carries a wave of significant consequences with it. There's no room for trial and error, no environment for testing. And at the same time, problem solvers don't get away with immunity here. They're kind of responsible for unexpected outcomes. And this seems a little bit complicated. Strangely, contemporary problem solving heads into an opposing direction, striving for simplicity in every which way. Often not enough, unfolding in almighty one-click-of-a-button concepts. Buttons. You have to know they bore me big time. I want complex, uncompressed, uncompressed and curious things, preferably things with internet. And if I could put on the kettle in my kitchen by giving the plant in my bathroom a high five, that would actually make me quite happy. So maybe that's a sharp turn in my line of thought, but unfortunately that's how my brain works. And the idea is not too far-fetched. Check this out. So the lovely lady in the video, she used the Makey Makey kit, which is basically a circuit board, some alligator clips and a USB cable. And with the kit, you can turn anything that is conductive into a key. So in this case, a row of flowers develops into a musical instrument. That's brilliant. So now it might actually get a little bit weird, but all in the purpose of inspiration. Plants, brainless creatures, are able to send, receive and interpret messages. They talk to each other in a secret language. When boxed chew on the leaves of a plant, it responds by releasing volatile organic compounds into the air. Somehow, neighboring plants become aware of what's going on and react to it themselves by pumping out bug repelling chemicals toward of prospective attacks. Apart from releasing chemicals, plants give off electrical signals too, on hundreds of occasions. So once we figured out how to tell these apart and how to read them accurately, I propose we invite plants in the role of biosensors back into our lives. The tomato plant of the future may warn you about a fire in your living room. It's alright. Tomato also called the fire brigade. Maintenance concerns are comparatively few. Plants are pretty autonomous creatures. They are like cats in that way. Best left alone, happy with a regular splash of water and a comfortable spot on the windowsill. No software update required. So there's a possibility that I'm missing a point here, but I don't get the thought process behind the creation of stuff that plainly resembles natural objects, especially 3D wallpapers of forests. Most recently, a stealthy spy drone, which looks like a bird, sought up from a special operations lab. I believe attaching a webcam to a carrier pigeon would have been way easier, but equally cracker. And I'd be stoked to hear more about projects that push these boundaries and find clever ways to include intelligent natural systems that have been around for 3.1 billion years of evolution into our own networks of knowledge. It's a blank space to experiment. So the next part of the story comes with a pinch of irony. Please don't panic. It'll be all right. It's based on a true incident and begins in the waiting area of an emergency room at my district's hospital. A few weeks ago, I burned my foot with boiling water. Be careful with kettles out there. Nevertheless, I continued my running routine, which was an error. Nailed it. One week later, my foot had doubled in size, and while I had never heard of exploding feet, I didn't want to take a chance and crawl to that hospital. The experience is not completely terrible. It's kind of expected. Most people keep to themselves or their plus ones, waiting their turn to see the doctor every foot for himself. There's no apparent sense of community. I mean, registering for residency, applying at the job center, or any other activity of bureaucratic nature runs a similar scenario. I'll take it in. So an elderly lady sits down in the chair in front of me and walking challenges her too. I wonder what in the world could make both of our hospital experience a little bit more pleasant. A walking aid, perhaps? There's only one way to validate this idea or fall, I mean, fail fast. A crowdfunding campaign, a stick starter, so to say. Now, think way beyond any regular strolling device here. I'm imagining a smart assistive cane, an item of the Internet of Alpine Stocks, first of its kind, disrupting the sidewalks of residential areas in our cities and empowering elderly people on the move. It comes in a hit bright, neon yellow. While its main functionality is to facilitate walking, it also counts steps and recommends a daily activity goal. The smart assistive cane will make itself known whenever it believes it's time for a walk. It'll take real-time weather data into account and never disturb you during primetime hours on TV. It's not a dog. It is a sophisticated domestic device for inside and outside of the home. The only problem is it already exists, kind of. All right, so I compiled this clip from a short film called Uninvited Guests. It's by London Design Studio Super Flux. It's the outcome of a research project which explores the frictions between an elderly man and the smart home environment his kids created for him. And I make sure to watch the whole video sometime if you want to. It raises a bunch of questions. What's the role of the human in a world of autonomous software? How do we want to live, grow old, and which technologies do we allow to join us on our journey? If tensions between human and machine agency are increasing, who will come out on top and does it matter? Because it's also, you know, it's very convenient. Sign in, sign out, like, tweet, agree to TNCs. Press the dash button. Dash button for a towel, you know. Save payment details, why not? Shopping as an automated routine. Click, queue, reward. Shoes don't fit, send them back. Turning the day of independence into the day of delivery. If I was to write that movie script, would you back it? It'll take 30 seconds. One click, click. Well, technology is not going to go away. It's way too fun. It's the answer to everything, even itself. And adding technology to stuff equals innovation plus disruption. And that's fine. I just wish people would clean up after innovating even better while they're at it and be aware of used materials or resources and what to do with them when the funding runs out. So I'd like to share a quote by Annab Jain. Those with the least power to shape the future suffer its worst consequences. Annab Jain runs the SuperFlex Studio, the one I mentioned earlier. And this quote is from a keynote at this year's next conference titled How Will We Live? I highly recommend it, too. And we kind of know that, right? Or was there anybody surprised? The problem is we don't feel agency to act on it because it usually happens somewhere else on TV. True causes of stuff remain invisible to people and create technology as long as they don't care. It takes effort to make this right. Not necessarily capital, not more capital, but human energy. So same story on the other end of the chain. The people who create technology are not the people who are using it. Call that imaginary. Stuff comes with the ideas of the creator and a suggested use case, but its true application will always be defined by the end user. So there are fairly straightforward methods to find out what the actual audience is going to be and, again, it will take time to figure this out. So I'm just going to let this run in the background. It's a clip from a case video about a project called Blind Maps. The team behind it builds a low-cost navigation system for the blind or visually impaired using mostly open hardware and software that's integrated into the canes grip and beacons. But more importantly, I'm sorry, it's not running, right? We get an insight into blind maps approach to develop the product, namely testing the digital interface and physical prototypes with real street scenarios and potential end users. It's like test-driven development, but with humans in the real world. So within the practice of service design, this is actually a very well-known research method, also called user shadowing. The magic trick is to simply spend time with your target audience, observe, find out as well as understand how, when and where, people evidently interact with the world around them or a specific software product. So spending a major share of our working hours on a computer or other connected device, this method may not seem relevant or applicable, but that's an illusion. Abstracting human-to-human interaction by putting two, a bunch, or an army of machines in between does not change the fact that there's a living creature on the other end. And every endpoint of a product, service, or software today is still a human being. Pretty happy to be challenged on that view later at the bar. Yesterday's keynote from Karina impressively displayed that the cost of inconsiderate development are not trivial, and that means you better get things right for every individual. So I dropped an important detail about that elderly lady in the hospital. She actually had a walking aid. He was about her age. He took her arm and patiently waited for her to catch up with every step. I can only assume they were partners in life and all. At least they interacted in that way. My iPhone and I have been together for four years. I recently put a sticker on it, albeit the chances of celebrating a 30-year anniversary are actually quite grim. Right now, I'm not even sure we make it past Christmas. So I don't want to replace it, but it's rapidly approaching inefficiency. It's unbelievably slow. I'm unable to run most recent app software. And I also feel self-conscious about taking it out of my pocket. I said just an hour ago, I think I got a comment from a man who's also in the audience. You have an iPhone 4? Very self-conscious about that. I checked my mails on quiet corners. Yet another machine replaced by another machine. It'll end up in the drawer next to the indestructible Nokia 3310. Drawers. The modern graveyards for our technical loved ones. Zombie metal. So returning to that runtime error, you may have noticed I changed the message twice. Can't say the world did not seem to be relevant. The world itself, Earth, is going to be fine. It'll be iron. The remaining question is, are we going to be fine? Living in a contemporary modern society often entails driving for speed, perfection and control. These are premises that make machines run well, not humans, at least not evidently. But that's how we live, and that's how we decide to live almost every day. So here we are, reality continues to lose touch with reality. We are abstracting our way out of increasingly complex environments into a world of meaningless buttons. How can we move away from this click-to-reward lifestyle? Unfortunately, traveling to space for the ultimate overview effect experience is not available to everyone just yet. Other than that, there is no download link for a social mindset, no subscription, 24.99 a month to join the Good Karma Cloud. There is no gem file for behavior change. Bundle install won't fix compassion dependencies. We can't bootstrap empathy. Rumor-hazard empathy is a muscle. Some would say the same about our brain, which means we simply need a good training plan and some cognitive protein, right? So I'm not going to surprise you with some technical advice, obviously. Though I will say the following. Beautifully written, smoothly running code is not going to rescue a fundamentally pointless software product or service. Furthermore, I suspect that every line of code suffers if it's written by a programmer who does not identify a belief in the significance and potential of the project she or she is working on. And regardless of what your craft is, I believe this to be true. A while back, I designed websites and online advertising campaigns for a living until I reached a point of complete carelessness and apathy, especially towards button design. Yeah, that left a nasty scar. I found myself not caring whether the by-nows or click-hiers that I was producing were green, blue or red. I did not care if they had a border radius or not, round square, a shadow, shine, whatever, it was terrible. I'm a designer, you know, I'm supposed to be good at this. Would click in them and finish someone's privacy? I had no clue. So there's nothing more important than finding a project or team that you honestly care about. That's it. Finding one may take a while, plus your perception of what a decent project is will change over time in the process. That time is worthwhile, even necessary. And at the end of the day, it will have a positive influence on the quality of your code. So my mission today is to inspire you to produce code that benefits humans, their habitat, or both, raise curiosity for the weird and peripheral living creatures in the world, including humans, and find your way to empathetic programming. Remember, you're dead stars, and we're all in this together. So some time ago, I heard a phenomenal piece of advice. Always give people information that leaves them active. A 404 does the complete opposite. Therefore, I'd like to tell you my first answer to runtime errors the universe and all. Help someone else to learn programming. Become a mentor. Sign up as a coach to the next Rails Bridge or Rails Girls Workshop in your local area. These initiatives do change lives. It sounds very cheesy, but I wouldn't be standing here without my towel on stage. If it weren't for developers who've now become friends who are taking this journey with me, push me, if face-to-face communication is not your preferred way to do that, write good documentation every day, make your code accessible to others. So my second answer to runtime errors the universe and all is challenge more designers with code. Enter a call of papers at a design conference and intrude that space with deeply technical talks. I'm serious. While I mostly identify as a designer, I haven't felt more welcome or in the right place other than on planet Ruby. And for that reason, I kind of have to believe that we need, you know, it's essential to find common space and hang out more. And once we feel comfortable with each other, maybe we can, you know, as designers slash developer types, we can collectively attend and disrupt further fields. Maybe a healthcare or finance summit. The one book that I would bring on a space mission would be In the Bubble by John Thacker. Just replace designing with programming and it would still make perfect sense. So it's programming in a complex world. If the video clip of uninvited guests wrapped your attention and you'd like to get deeper into critical design and possible potential futures, future everything in Manchester is a brilliant conference to go to and while you're in town, you can visit the Alan Turing Memorial. So this slide tells me I made it to the Q&A and before I kick that off, I would like to thank Afti and Ernie for encouraging me to come up here and speak to you guys about this stuff. It was slightly terrifying but an absolute pleasure. I'm going to wait for you to take a picture of that. All right, so dolphins in questions.