Welcome to another episode of the Democracy Innovator Podcast and our guest
of today is Alice Casiraghi. Welcome Alice and as the first question I would like
to ask you ~ something about you,
about your background and that's all.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you, Alessandro. Thank you for inviting me.
so yes, ~ to introduce myself,
I am a designer. I work in sustainability,
~ work mainly in circular economy and ~ regenerative ~ systems.
And ~ well I started as a originally I started as a UX designer,
as a digital UX designer in China,
where I graduated and I lived my first
Three, four professional years,
moved to yeah, stayed in Shanghai for a few years,
then started working internationally in Asia,
~ Hong Kong, Singapore. And then I came back to Italy for an opportunity
at the digital transformation team of the Italian government.
~ worked in Rome for a few months,
then I was about to move back to Asia and ~ the pandemic happened.
So then I was
already here and it was difficult to
~ organise the visa,
organise my ~ life back in Shanghai,
so I stayed here and still I am in Milan,
~ based in Milan right now. And this shift from digital UX design
to ~ sustainability, circular economy,
regenerative ecosystems is
Something that happened already before I went to the digital transformation team
in Rome. I started in 2018 trying to apply my knowledge as
a designer to regeneration. Because many times when you read about
the circular economy, it says that you need to design things so that they're
not made to be thrown away. ~ you need to design systems so that they
are regenerative, but they need to be regenerative by design.
Because if you try to
introduce regeneration in a system that is designed in a linear model,
so in a throwaway culture, ~ then it doesn't work.
And so I since then I started working with the food policy of the city
of Milan for four or five years,
~ with ~ European food systems and ~ also Mediterranean,
Middle East and North African food systems.
~ how trying to shape policies towards circularity
or interventions towards circularity
And later on I've been also supporting the efforts of coordinating
the Youth and Climate Assembly of Milan,
the first Youth and Climate Assembly of Milan,
which has been a very interesting way to apply design knowledge
and facilitation skills to public services.
So I've been transitioning more and more towards sustainability
but also towards public services and governing structures.
Very interesting, I'm thinking about circular economy and regenerative systems
and you said that a system has to be ~ designed
to be regenerative and not...
So, would you like to tell us something more about
how can a regenerative system be designed?
Mm-hmm. Sure. ~ so in every in every system,
in every ~ political ecosystem,
in every s ~ like state, country,
city, region, you would have regulations that drive your choices towards
one drive your yeah, choices towards one steer your choices towards
one direction or another. ~ and generally laws ~ are made
to preserve what is
What somebody fought for protecting.
If you decide that certain things need to be protected,
if you put enough voice into this,
then this will result into political decision and eventually laws.
so laws tend to be conservative because they are designed after a reality
has been built. ~ and think about,
for example, the dangers of AI or the throwaway culture,
like you need to reintroduce models of regeneration or like prevent packaging.
or control AI in a certain way,
but you need to introduce laws for this because you you these laws are reactionary.
They they happen after innovation happens,
they happen after ~ groups of people,
lobbying groups of people for good or for bad,
~ decide to advocate for one thing or another.
So in order to introduce circularity and regeneration,
you need to rethink also the systems of regulations,
incentives and and also fines.
to to steer ~ to nudge certain behaviors.
It's called behavioral nudging.
You drive people's ~ behaviors towards one direction or another.
~ when I was living in Shanghai there was a moment in which
the regulation changed for waste sorting and recycling and then
you know everybody was fine a little bit,
maybe just two, three euros the equivalent of two or three euros,
if they didn't sort their waste.
And this small change made everybody slowly comply because it's not
one big fine that could happen if the police would catch you,
but it's a repetitive fine that you're sure will happen.
So it's a repetition that steers you towards a certain direction.
Or for example, preventing people from binge eating and making money out
of it on YouTube. This is another thing,
you know, it's another regulation that steers people towards a different value,
different set of values. First you want you wanted to boast that you could afford
to binge eat and also make a show out of it and being paid for it.
And then it becomes something to be ashamed of.
So this is how you you y you nudge behaviors,
you steer behaviors towards ~ more or less sustainable choices.
And I'm thinking about policies versus culture.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
So that culture can be influenced by policies and vice versa.
~ How this is considered when designing a system.
I think my knowledge of the topic is more anecdotal than ~ coming from like
research studies. but fr from yeah,
well from field research I can tell you if you change the size of a waste
bin or if you introduce two waste bins instead of one.
You need to test these kind of solutions because then if you introduce
two waste beans, people would throw away twice as much.
If you change the size of the waste bin,
then people might throw it away somewhere else.
So
There you always need to ~ when you when introduce a polity a policy you
try to be mindful of the context so of the traditions of people
if something is considered acceptable ~ or not locally,
~ because of religion, because of mm cultural beliefs,
but also you need to test how people will respond.
~ so it's yeah, it's ~ as you said,
it's a two way conversation. On one hand you you're trying to be mindful
of the local culture.
And on the other hand, you are trying to see how people respond to the
way you are introducing ~ the policy.
So I guess it's a continuous, you know,
test and ~ test and learn.
And also in relation to the digital transformation.
Because when we talk about ~ transformation and also
it means that we are taking what it was working in a certain way
and we are transforming it in a digital way.
How the design process
~ can be done, how does it happen?
~ how it was your experience in relation to this.
Hmm.
Okay. ~ that's that's super interesting.
So on one hand, ~ so when when I joined the digital transformation team,
one thing that I had to realize,
of course it came from my inexperience,
was that I don't only have to talk to the citizens and try to you know when
you develop an app, ~ you d you of course need to test it with the citizens,
understand if it's
the experience is good enough for them if it's immediate,
if it's if it's preferable compared to the offline experience,
because it might be more immediate,
but people might have ~ safety concerns or priv privacy concerns.
~ but on the other hand you need to test the experience of the service providers,
which is the municipalities, which is ~ when you say municipality or when
you say a hospital, when you say it's actually people
the work in very traditional systems administration systems.
So people who have been used to print papers,
make you sign the paper, scan your ID card,
and so they need to be able to do this digitally.
And the decision makers in this administration,
in these hospitals, they also need to be able to allow
for their employees to ~ public servants.
to approve these processes. So th there are many actors that come together in this,
right? You need to have the the legal representative,
that is for example, the mayor or the dean or the director of the hospital,
that needs to sign for you to be able to provide them with a template
for digital services, then they need to have some technical person that adapts
the digital service to them if it's an open source system like the Italian
~ digital public services system.
~ and then you need to have ~ the administr the administrative part
or the policy officers they need to operate these accounts and these online service
and they need to do it in a way they they need to relearn completely.
So it's not just about the citizen because the citizen when they start using public
s ~ digital services for everything,
from paying a fine to getting a document to renewing a document,
it gets easy for them because they are used to do it for
multiple different services with the same template.
But the people who work for that hospital,
that municipality, ~ that administration,
they have to start s from scratch just for their own administration
and then keep repeating this process on and on.
So I guess it's ~ it's also a big learning curve for them.
And you need to be mindful that whenever there's a problem,
there's like the legal part needs to be aware,
but they do you don't have to bother them too much because otherwise
i it's ~ too much ~ involvement from the non operative part.
So there are many ~ profiles there in tract,
many stakeholders ~ behind the digitalization of a service.
Yeah, sure, I ~ can imagine this and also
I was thinking something interesting is that ~ many people
or episodes of the podcast were about platforms that most of
the times they were ~ imagined by the person that created
the platform and then proposed to Anna.
let's say, an imaginary audience.
So I have an idea about Civic Tech software,
Mm.
I do it, I create the software,
and then I hope that someone else will use it.
yes, of course.
While in this case, it's working on something that is already there,
you know the users, basically.
Mm. Yeah, it's a service that people need already.
there.
We know that they need it for sure.
So
Yeah, exactly.
And yeah, I was thinking about this difference
and yeah, and what have you learned during this process
and also maybe in relation also to the other things that you mentioned before.
~
that could be designing a system
but also a system that is ~ working.
I don't know if the question is clear or if you have something to say about it.
Yeah.
yes. ~ it's kind of clear but ~ so what I've learned in t in working with public
services, first I've learned that designers are needed in public services more than
we actually thought 'cause there's a lot of technical profiles in public service.
There's ~ domain experts, ~ there's ~ yeah,
developers if developers. For example,
architects, they work much more with public services than designers do.
Designers they think they have to design,
you know, ~ objects or experiences.
But in the end, we are also very useful into designing public services.
And there's also ~ a very sought after profile in the public administration services
that is the facilitator, the one that talks with the citizens,
organizes focus groups, peer learning sessions,
stakeholder alignments, stakeholder is
different public and ~ private companies that work with the municipality
to achieve a specific goal. So all of these is also a skill set that pertains
to designers, especially service designers or user experience designers like
~ myself. so on one hand I learned that this
is very necessary to relieve the user experience,
the the burden of the user experience from you know,
the the user ha having to
fail many times before you achieve a good result.
~ And you and in any case, whenever you add more research
and human-focused research at the beginning,
~ it just makes sense. It's an investment that will pay back in the long term.
~ Especially exactly in public services that are already necessary
and they are super scalable. ~ The other thing that I
learned ~ now that I talk about ~ the user and the human-centric focus
is that it's not just about the human,
the the customer, but it's also about the impact that a thing you design,
a service you design will have on the broader infrastructure,
the society and even the planet.
So ~ recently I've been supporting these efforts to facilitate a youth
and climate assembly in Milan.
So developing proposals for the cities for the city on climate.
~ and even there you need to always think of frameworks to convey this message
to the people involved that you're finding a solution that supports them
for the planet or that supports them in better communication with
the government and the local organizations and the planet.
And you need to create this ~ mind map,
you have to create this framework in which citizens understand ~ that they have
duties, they have
rights, they can ask for something,
they can also they need to also comply with other things,
they can vote for the municipality,
interact with the municipality,
work with the municipality, but they also have to,
you know, ~ provide feedback from the company.
The municipality regulates the company and then these will have an impact
on the way resources are used and it will have an impact on the planet.
And so it's always an ecosystem of moving parts.
And I learned to expand my perspective and trying to map this this expanded
perspective, a systemic perspective,
so to make it easy for ~ customers
or ~ people that with which
I facilitate ~ that they're not making individual decisions,
they're making decisions, you know,
in inside of an ecosystem, inside of a system,
inside of
and administration so to put things in relation with one another.
And in relation to the climate assembly,
the Tecanymaging was a sort of citizen assembly,
what do you think could
Mm-hmm.
be improved in those systems?
Mm.
And also, ~ because it will be interesting also
if more people do it.
Because I think that participation is on one side helpful
so that ~ we collect what the people would like to see in their cities.
At the same time it is also important that a person express what they feel because
otherwise people... I mean I talk also for myself,
I get frustrated if I don't have ~ a possibility to express myself.
Yeah.
in relation to something and if you have any idea about what
to improve during this kind of process.
Mm.
So there's a lot of things that we don't know very well of the
of how municipalities work or how do they talk to their citizens 'cause sometimes
the communication doesn't get to us.
First of all, in cities especially,
there's generally newsletters that you can follow.
You like first duty is on us to ~ not just follow tech newsletter or
s or circular economy sustainability newsletter,
but also follow the municipality ones.
To know more about our surroundings.
~
Then the second thing is in terms of the assemblies,
for example Milan also has a permanent citizens' assembly,
so it's not for use, it's a permanent assembly.
And the way it's structured is I think quite ~ standard in
a way that thousands
of citizens get receive this invitation yearly to be part of this climate assembly.
And then a few of them will respond,
and then ~ a cohort of ~ I think around forty to fifty citizens
is added to an older cohort of forty to fifty citizens so that half
of the assembly remains from the previous year and half of the assembly goes out,
transitions out, and and new people come in so that you ~ on
one hand ensure continuity but also new ideas.
And ~ it depends. Certain things are managed with
groups of interest people that are already active in w within the municipality,
people that have ~ key ~ activities in the city.
~ or sometimes it's just the whole citizenship being engaged.
It it it ~ depends on what is the topic,
what is the administration. I'm talking broadly,
not just about Milan. one thing that I learned is that you need
to allow for people to express their voice,
but you also need to
mediate this message. You have to contextualize.
You have to show what are they asking,
what what are to whom are they asking,
are they bringing their ~ proposals?
~ what is the context so that proposals are better drafted.
And also so that you understand that a proposal is feasible because
if you for example want to propose ~ a service
On waste management in a place where waste management is privatized
and it's not public, then it's gonna be hard to ~ to achieve that goal
if the private company is not in the conversation.
For example, you can ask it to the municipality,
but then it will be up to them to talk to the private sector,
and then maybe they don't align.
So you always need to be very aware of the context.
You need to really engage with complexity and systemic thinking.
and then what did I learn?
yeah.
I think these are the main takeaways.
~ I learned that mm we d I mean the more you get involved,
the more you will learn the intricacies of how does it work and
the more you will be ~ also kind of understanding whenever there's
a a failure, there's a roadblack,
you understand, you know, for what are the reasons.
The other thing actually that I wanted to say and now it comes back to
my mind is I've been visiting some friends in Switzerland and I've seen
how referendum works there and you receive a leaflet ~ with the reasons
to vote yes and the reasons to vote no and they've all been peer reviewed
and you can go through all the motivations and they will try to explain
the topic as clearly as they possibly could,
especially if it's a topic that you don't know much about.
Sometimes it's a bit too daunting,
sometimes the the pr the the topics are very difficult to understand,
but I like that they don't shy away from showing you the complexity
and giving you perspective. So I think something that needs to be improved
is this is to showcase the complexity of things,
and and and getting citizens
~ to really think more critically.
About what they can decide for.
And sometimes even know that they are ignorant on a topic,
and maybe it's better if it's not for them to choose.
sometimes we tend to oversimplify issues,
and then everybody has an opinion and they can go to the bar and get they
can talk about their opinion. But for example,
in Milan we have these taller weeds growing now in the parks because there
was a decision was made to introduce
biodiverse weeds so that they would invite more biodiversity in insects,
birds, and so on and so forth,
and it's working. And then people are like,
but it looks like ~ the municipality doesn't want to spend the money
to cut the grass. It looks like more careless than it it used to be before.
It looks less polished. And then the citizens were convinced because there
was an analysis from ~ I think Bicoka University showing that
These tall grasses, not only they reintroduced biodiversity,
which citizens didn't really care about,
but also it helped retain more of the pollution from the car's exhaust because it's
at that same height in the street.
So for that people were like, Okay,
maybe we can keep the grasses,
you know, because it's protecting our children.
For me, ~ I I consider them to be beautiful to see more more
Taller grasses or flowers and ~ I live close to a park where there's
an artificial pond and now there's a heron,
a heron bird, one of those big birds that you will see in the rice studies.
It comes to that artificial pond ~ every now and then.
And I keep track of her, him.
and I love to see this bird close to me,
even if it's an anthro very anthropo anthropised environment.
~ I don't know. I just think that it's
Beautiful. ~ and if I need to thank the tall grasses and the and the flowers,
~ I'm very happy to have them.
An older generation will be more used to English gardens,
clean cut grass, then for them it will be harder to accept,
especially in aging societies,
bringing change is always hard.
But I guess we yeah,
again, we all need to the municipalities need to be better at showing
the many aspects of a decision,
the complexity, finding the lever for you to accept it.
So if it's not for biodiversity,
maybe it's for your lungs. And the other thing is that people need
to be more patient and ~ understand they don't always have
an opinion about everything, 'cause we cannot be expert of everything.
I was thinking about the output of something that can be a collective discussion
or decision. So it can
be a policy or can be just an advice to the municipality about what citizens want.
And being that we are going towards
a sort of digital society, can imagine.
~ How do you the co-creation
of policies from citizens? Can this
be ~ scaled in terms of design?
Because now, as you mentioned,
there is a permanent assembly.
But then maybe this can be also scaled up,
so with more people participating because I mean in Milan there
are millions of people. And I wonder also in relation
to other topics ~ because it would be very interesting to see like
the city participating in relation to what has to be decided in the city.
Mm. Huh, so yeah, I this is a complex question
to answer because on one hand,
you know, when you ask everybody to participate directly into
the public ~ decision making, ~ it's for me it's a great idea.
It sounds like a great idea. ~ at the same time,
how do you assess their readiness to ~ understand certain topics?
You should
educate, enable people to ~ to participate into the conversation
so you should first inform the citizens then you should allow them to have
~ a voice into ~ what they into public discussion
~ and the third thing you should protect them from the threat of
a digital democracy so digital democracy where
I don't know, votes are anonymized,
tokenized. ~ i you need to trust the system a lot.
I think ~ I would welcome a system that
~ facilitates us ~ from
the facilitates ~ the the development of proposals from the citizens because
in Italy we suffer of this a little bit.
We vote once every few years.
it should be every five years,
I think, but then it happens more often than not,
the governments fall and then we have to vote again.
But our only moment of decision is voting and it happens in a very concerted time
in which there is a lot of propaganda because all the different parties
are doing political campaigning.
So ~ it's not a very calm,
~ and reflective ~ environment to to make political decisions.
It's always
the rush of of the political campaign before the elections.
So yeah, I would welcome such a system and I guess you I mean
the technology is there and the technology is just an enabler,
right? We we always need to understand how to use technology for
the benefit of societies. ~ but we've seen we're like we are
now seeing how technology is useful to control ~
people or to decide for, you know,
making work decisions that people don't want to make.
~ or ~ yeah,
informing strategies that should be ~ informed
by some human being so that somebody can be held accountable.
So right now we're using technologies
to achieve governing to to get to governing decisions that people would rather
not make, not the ones that people would want to make.
I don't know, it's ~ I don't know if you have a different perspective than mine.
I I mean I wish we we would use technology much more for good decision making
instead of you know, using it as a dumpster for the si decisions we don't want
you
to be responsible for so that they nobody can sue us after.
Yeah, I mean I can imagine technology more as a sort
of enabler mediator ~ between different citizens
or also between citizens and the municipality but then something that they should
be avoided is the black box because then you do
not understand what ~ is happening.
And yes, as you said, now we have the technology to also make it happen.
Then there could be a lot of risks related to this.
And those in relation to what you said about informing
the citizens about the topic, also that,
of course, is something very important.
But also I think that many times.
citizens are informed about specific topics just because they live in the place.
So they live in a place,
Yeah.
they see the place every day, so of course maybe they don't have
a theoretical background about how the grass
can be good for pollution and so on,
so they just see maybe the aesthetic part.
~ But yeah.
Yeah, I I agree.
So if it's an informative process instead of deliberative process,
which means if I am a citizen and I want to inform the municipality there's
a hole in the ground, there's like some minor floating,
there is some ~ mm sick tree. That's that's hundred percent how
I would use technology because ~ it allows well you always have to think of how
People would use it in a bad way.
Because there will be somebody that wants to use it to to make harm.
There is somebody that wants to sabotage your efforts.
There could be somebody. ~ so yeah,
but I I would s I would ~ use it the same way you would inform ~ like
a bike sharing service that the bike is broken.
It's like a feedback system. Technology is very useful for that.
Absolutely. And in relation to
the Yacht Climate Assembly of Milan,
~
try to refer on the question otherwise it's similar to the previous one.
Now I'm thinking like about
the outputs of the climate assembly of Milano.
~ Which kind of difference would
Mm.
you say that like in relation to an output of let's say of a municipality
or a group of experts ~
Did you see any significant difference?
~
Mm.
Like is the co-creation really changing the output?
Okay, ~ two things that I also two takeaways that I also want to take from
my work in universities to teach systemic thinking,
circular economy, regenerative design.
On one hand, you really need the human part ~ when you
mm do decision making. So the co creation with people that have less
of a voice because they're not expert on a certain topic,
but they can give you a another perspective and like talking to more people.
It's always ~ useful, I would say,
talking to groups of people, especially in if you're talking in in person with these
people. I realized even with my students,
you know, when you ask them to solve a problem,
~ a design problem for nature,
for humans and nature, even when you ask them this and they're working in front
of a computer and they are, you know,
they're like the experts in the field.
They will like now use AI and get to the get to the solution with AI
~ with more information faster than ever before.
So they finish the the task within two hours,
but they don't have fun with that.
They don't have they don't talk,
they don't share, they don't stimulate each other.
I think this creative social part of generating ideas,
it's very important. It's really useful.
so
Like even with my students, I I challenge them in saying,
okay, yeah, this this is a good answer for a generic intelligence,
artificial intelligence. But if you want to give me your personal answer,
what would you expect? What would you do?
What would you want? so I think experts advise on strategies,
but then ~ instead ~
Citizens they bring their experience and they add diversity.
And we know that ~ with AI and with ~
the traditional mm workplace as we know it,
we have a bias for ~ a specific target group.
We are always talking to generally
~ the older white male in charge in power.
So it's yes, we have more diversity in the workplace right now than we used
to have 50 years ago. But at the same time we don't have as much diversity.
So I guess it helps to ~ I think it's important
to to have conversations with citizens.
And again it's a two way street.
Like you inform the citizens and at the same time you ask for their opinion.
And then if you need to validate certain matters,
you talk to experts. When you organize citizens' assemblies,
you always have a mix of expertises.
You have the citizens, you have the facilitators,
you have the experts, you have the stakeholders.
The experts might be scientists that work with the municipality.
The stakeholders are companies that have an interest in that specific field
or that are working with the municipality on that field,
whether it's private or public.
yeah, you have ~ a a directorate from a municipality that is in charge of
of ~ collecting the opinions and making reports.
So it's I don't think these either or experts or citizens.
It's both. Like you're just enlarging to also the citizens,
not just the experts. ~ when I was living in China,
I used to do research for brands.
My very first job was to do research for brands.
And for me everything was new because I was doing research for brands from
the US or Europe that wanted to come to China.
And when I interviewed experts
what they used to tell me was always,
not always, like 80% of the time is full of prejudice.
Because it was an opinion coming generally from the Western business leader
or the person that didn't take enough time to fall in love with the local society
~ ecosystem to then give you answers that are out of passion for,
you know, mm that context.
So you would have the guy that ~ came from the same industry but working in Europe,
coming to work in China, being the expert of their own craft,
but never taking the time to understand what was the actual experience
of local people. And so this is when design came in handy,
because you could interpret these signals and say,
Hey, by the way, let let me challenge this.
You know, why are you saying that?
Why are you saying that this is gross and this is okay?
Why are you saying that this is preferable and this is not?
Have you talked to the people?
~
So yeah, I would say it's just a more complex way of doing things,
~ to organize assemblies, but also more fulfilling.
And I guess because the reality in which we live today it's not
the best possible world or it's not going towards the best possible world,
we need to enrich our perspective to find alternative solutions.
Yeah, we are living in a democratic system and as you said it's not
~ the best possible word, not because it is a democratic system of course,
but I wonder ~ if we talk about digitalization,
we are also talking about ~ designing a new system,
so maybe it could be a new kind of democracy and also I wonder...
like for you, what it could be done to make this the best possible world.
Mm. Okay, listen, if we like the point is not democracy or not for me,
the point is ~ redistributing
and it's ~ redistributing among peoples and with nature.
Like from my perspective of a person working in sustainability or regeneration,
I can tell you that one of the biggest issues is how much resources we're taking
from the rest of the planet and
thinking that they are there for us to make use of them.
Also for AI, also for digital.
Like we're using anything from the water in the rivers to cool down
the servers to the space to fuel to power these giant machines,
sometimes for very ~ very useless tasks.
So very yeah ~ superficial tasks.
And so the best ~
In in my perspective the the best possible world would be a world where
mm we even get more stakeholders in decision making that is goes beyond human
beings. And if you could talk to the tree or to the fox or to the bumblebee
or to a rock and say, Hey, look,
like help us make a decision, I guess they will give us very different answers from
the ones we give. So enlarging,
you know, from the single decision maker,
the leader to the experts, to the citizens,
to anything beyond human.
and achieving, you know, those sustainability goals that
we have collectively decided that we should strive for for from the UN,
the the Agenda twenty thirty, the Paris Agreement.
These are goals that experts, domain experts,
pro bono most of the time, have been working towards.
And I think we should all be more educated to them and everything that
we do in public services, in
In digital ~ startups, in every business ecosystem,
we should be mindful that we're working inside of a larger system that
we need to protect. So introduce the non human stakeholders into
the conversation ~ to design better solutions.
Because if we really need to comply with the Paris Agreement to survive as species,
we might as well introduce the limits of the Paris Agreement
in business decisions so that
We all work towards that, for the for the collective.
We're not really going in the direction at the moment.
Yeah, I really like the idea about having animals as new political actors that
can maybe decide also about how much the grass has to be,
how much nature...
But they need to be they need to be
non interest ~ non interested ~ animals because if it's your pets like cats
and dogs, then that doesn't make sense 'cause they depend on the food you give them.
So it needs to be in the from the opposition,
Yeah.
from opposing perspective, you get more richness because you find contrast
and in contrast you find new solutions.
I wonder how terms of design this can be done.
Because we can imagine probably the needs of an animal that could be a bird,
could be a cow. ~ It's actually an interesting point.
Maybe new democracy, new political system will also involve animals as actors
and it will be very interesting.
Exactly.
Maybe we need to you know, there are these ~ futuristic dystopian ~ films
or T V series that ~ where we decipher the language of animals and then we're able
to talk to them and some use it in better ways,
some use it and and like exploit it for again their own ~ individual wealth.
But it this is something that we could do in learning to interpret those voices.
And ~ involve them into a more collective decision making.
I actually saw on some social media like ~ dogs,
mean that they were pushing some buttons like to say go out,
Mm-hmm.
I need to do this or that and yeah,
and I was like, okay, they can speak so they can also vote.
Of course I'm exaggerating but they have some sort
of ~ way of
I mean, I've had a dog and he was very,
able to express himself of communicating.
Yes. I never know
I never know how do those videos work.
Like it's it's very weird for me to under like that an animal is giving
you messages like that. 'Cause it i it means they are
not only passively interpreting human voice for receiving orders,
but they're also giving something back.
So I don't know. There there are scientists that study these kind of things.
I I don't have enough experience to talk about it.
~ but yeah,
There's also more we have like this tunnel perspective
in the West that is human to human and like kind of ignoring everything else,
ignoring again the complexity of the interdependence.
And I don't want to sound exotic but there are different traditions,
different cultures, indigenous cultures that instead have a way to
~ relate to other species or
you know, consider the environment as ~ a part of a one living thing together with
humans. So maybe we need to also listen to diversity among humans to learn ways
of working with other nature.
Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of relations,
human to human, I'm thinking that,
I mean, going back to the, let's say,
to technology in some way, I mean,
this human to human often is passing through technology,
also now. And I'm wondering about
the future of
I mean also in term of let's say user interface ~ because
we have seen ~ graphical interfaces in the last...
I mean always,
I mean after the terminal then we started using graphical interface and then
now we are going back to a chatbot.
I don't know if going back or going forward.
And I wonder, like, ~ in the future
if we are all going to use a chatbot.
So I will say, okay, send an email to Aliche and say this and the mail will be sent.
Or if we still need the graphical interface.
because it resembles more reality.
are you asking me if we need ~ graphical interfaces or not for the future?
I guess we're very dependent on screens at the moment because that
was the easiest solution for us to develop a screen to contain our reality
and this shaped our experience.
It shapes how we relate to the digital world.
screens are taking different shapes mm more and more.
~ so I guess it's up for
experimentation like if there are no technical limits,
if there are no resource constraints,
~ and spoiler there are, ~ I guess
we can shift from yeah,
maybe voice or like already you can use the glasses now to to see information,
to talk, to register, to to to record information.
So I guess wearables glasses are already ~ a new direction.
again, our digital economy is very real in terms of resource consumption,
so I guess it depends also on what is available in this
new geopolitical yeah,
in this new geopolitical landscape.
so it depends on the resources,
it depends on what kind of ~ technologies develop faster with AI.
You know, sometimes you have many possibilities and then one takes over just
because, you know, we thought all we all wanted buttons on a telephone
and then mm the iPhone came out with just a screen with no buttons
and we all switched to no buttons and then maybe something else will happen.
So mm it will ~ finally we'll find a pair of glasses very convincing
and we all switch to glasses. I I really don't know.
~ but I guess
Yeah.
It comes
from marketing, it comes from resources in many,
many ways.
Yeah, there are no ways to discover it.
~ I was thinking about this question
~ in relation to the agentic state,
is a quite interesting concept about the digitalization of the state.
Mm.
And I know that they were suggesting...
I mean now they are experimenting with some chatbots and so I was...
that's why I was thinking about this.
You
know what? ~ the the best thing that I could think of,
like if if I have to think about how I would imagine part of the agentic state
is me going around with ~ I don't know,
glasses or something wearable and I see mm some issue with the streets
and I can just take a picture and like this picture goes exactly
To who needs to see it, to fix a road,
to depave a way, to show that there's like too many cars and too much traffic
in one street, not enough trees,
to show that there needs to be more shade for people in summer.
It goes directly to the people that need to know.
And if it's aligned with global sustainability goals,
with the Paris Agreement, with some
decision making will happen automatically and some robot will come and
fix it and like plant a tree or put set up a shade or fix the road
or without involving so much bureaucracy and decision making,
that thing would be super useful.
if we agree, if we all vote that there's like some direction
to look forward to and it's for example,
~ climate goals, and then if that suggestion of mine aligns with those,
there's nobody that needs to make a decision.
And just go straight there. There's no there's no cycling lane.
Okay, let's put a cycling lane with trees.
Okay, good, let's go.
Because we will eventually get there,
so we can
but
sorry, I I was thinking we will eventually get there,
but it will take lawsuits, it will take you know,
now there's a lot of climate litigations because the more climate targets become
stringent and then the UN ~ decides that you can sue your country
for ~ climate target or w if there's a precedent like these Klima Signorinian
in Switzerland that have sued their government because they're not feeling safe
in their retirement because they're they think about climate change.
Once a lawsuit goes through, then you will have more lawsuits.
So eventually this will happen.
Now they're talking about citing religious concerns against using
AI at at work because of the encyclical of the new pope.
~ again, it will take, you know,
push and pull from different perspectives to re steer the this technocratic reality
towards more human and redistributed possibilities.
but yeah.
I I guess I guess it could happen faster if we all decided that technology would
just go and do it without too much bureaucracy involved.
I think this would be awesome ~ if we are able to avoid the black box that
I was mentioning before. And I think it's doable
Mm.
and I think it can be done. ~
the last question is if you have any message for people,
let's say in the field, people that are thinking about designing new kind of
system that can work with democracy.
So could be platform, could be doing research about
~ how to shape our cities in a way that they more sustainable,
like people that are putting their energies toward this.
Yeah, I think my message stays the same.
We really need to enlarge the perspective beyond humans and try find ways
to engage with the the complexity of the world around
us and the resources that we depend on,
but also the species that we take the land from and everything
and and re engage with the with this complexity and find solutions that satisfy
everybody because right now we are really
walking towards, you know, some of the worst case scenarios in terms
of ~ habitable earth for the future.
So ~ I think the only way forward is to ~ engage
in systemic thinking beyond humans.
So that's my final message. Find ways to engage beyond humans into
the democratic conversation. Even in like in
the particip participatory conversation.
Thank you Aliche. And would you like to anything else?
If you have something that maybe we didn't touch?
no, I think it's good thank you.
It quite ~ mm a scattered conversation,
but I hope some messages came out clear.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you again.
Thank you.