World Building:John Maeda designs the future of art, tech, and architecture

The Technically Human Podcast

In this episode, I give my mic over to Ana Marsh and Matt Perry, two producers on the show, for an interview with John Maeda.

Dr. John Maeda is an American technologist and product experience leader who is known around the world for building bridges between business, engineering, and design—and his dedication to working inclusively. He is the SVP Chief Customer Experience Officer at Everbridge, where he works on the future of Critical Event Management technologies for saving lives and keeping businesses and society running.

He is an MIT-trained computer scientist, who blends his training as a computer scientist with an MBA. He is the author of five books including the new How To Speak Machine and the bestselling Laws of Simplicity. Among his MANY leadership positions, he serves on the board of Directors at Sonos and the Smithsonian Design Museum, he is the former President/CEO of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and he is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins venture capital in Silicon Valley.

During his early career, Dr. Maeda was an MIT research professor in computational design, represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He is also a recipient of the White House’s National Design Award. He has appeared as a speaker all over the world, from Davos to Beijing to São Paulo to New York, and his TED talks have received millions of views.

To quote WIRED Magazine, “Maeda is to design what Warren Buffett is to finance.”

Today’s hosts, Ana Marsh and Matt Perry, are producers on the Technically Human podcast.

Ana Marsh is a fourth-year computer science student at Cal Poly. She is graduating in the Spring of 2021 and plans to start full-time at Microsoft in the Fall. She has a deep interest in ethical technology, cultivated through her coursework in computer science and the University’s new technically human course, part of the Cal Poly ethical technology initiative. Matt Perry is a fifth-year architecture student at Cal Poly from Las Vegas, NV. Now in the final year of his degree, he is doing research on ephemeral architecture and designing for the human experience, while exploring the future of architecture. He hopes to spend his time designing architecture with the human experience at the forefront of design.

Ana and Matt talk about what it means to blend tech and art, how we can think about the future of humane design, and how we can make tech great again.
Art by Desi Aleman
Produced by Matt Perry