Applied Minds CEO: Digesting tomorrow's chaos is "of most import"
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Photo illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios. Photo: Applied Minds
Long-term scheming is no doubt important. But today's "chaotic and complex and rapidly evolving world" demands shorter-term thinking and maneuvering, according to Bran Ferren, the cofounder and CEO of Applied Minds.
- "What's going to happen tomorrow, next week or next year is of most import," he told Axios in an interview. "At the moment, that's my focus."
Why he matters: Ferren is the former president of research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering. He has also worked with Lockheed Martin, Herman Miller, the Library of Congress and more.
Q: When will wars be waged solely by robots?
A: They will never be solely waged by robots. As long as there are human beings, there's a tendency of one to punch the other in the nose, and that escalates, and we call it war.
- I think that's never going to go away.
Q: Where are you investing internally, and how could it shake up the status quo?
A: We have significant advances in the next generation of human interface.
- If you look at the typical interfaces of defense systems, you're lucky if they're 1980s command-line interfaces, as compared to what our kids are using on their iPhones and iPads and other devices. So a lot of our effort is: How do you make better interfaces for people that are not just more intuitive, but are more effective, especially for younger generations of war-fighters who did not grow up using 1980s technology.
Q: What region of the world should we be watching? Why?
A: We should be watching all regions of the world.
- But I think the one that requires significant focus — that perhaps we've ignored — is looking at ourselves and seeing what do we actually need in the way of the workforce of the future and the defense capability of the future.
Q: How many emails do you get a day, and how do you deal with them?
A: I probably get 400-600 emails in the course of the day. Half are junk and spam. I'm so glad, as was announced by friends like Bill Gates, that this was a solved problem 10 years ago. But it's not quite on my system.
- The way I deal with it is selective attention. When I miss something important, hopefully that person will remind me that I'm not being responsive.
Q: What's a piece of gear or tech you can't go without?
A: It's a very mature, refined and sensible technology: It's called a pad and paper. It gives me the ability to draw and interact with the subtlety that the electronic systems are not capable of doing — even though the electronic ones certainly have a whole set of their own advantages.
- To go more to first principles, the technology would be my brain that, hopefully, is functioning.
Q: What advice would you give your younger self?
A: Interesting question. It would be "Listen to my older self."
