Fjord Fika

Karl is currently the CEO and co-founder of nuTonomy, a software company that builds software for fully driverless vehicles. nuTonomy’s mission is to radically improve the safety, efficiency, and accessibility of transportation in cities worldwide. That means a future where driverless vehicles are available where people need them, when they need them, in cities from Singapore to San Francisco and everything in between. By eliminating accidents due to driver error and maximizing vehicle utilization, nuTonomy hopes to enable safer roads and a healthier planet. In this Fika break, we talk to Karl about transportation efficiency, the potential for reshaping cities, saving lives through autonomous vehicles, and creating a driving system on the road that is much, much safer than today’s human piloted cars.

ProPublica is a digital-only media company focused entirely on investigative journalism. ProPublica digs deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust, and follows those stories as long as it takes to hold power to account. And they do it as a non-profit.

It’s an interesting business model for a media company, but one that has been successful for ProPublica in its 10+-year history.ProPublica and its staff of journalists have received four Pulitzer Prizes, three Peabody Awards, two Emmy Awards and a National Magazine Award, among others, for their work. In this Fika break, we talk to Celeste LeCompte, ProPublica’s Vice President of Business Development, about combating the disinformation war, tackling the slow death of local media, and being champions of investigative and accountability journalism. We also talk about ProPublica’s business model, expansion plans and where journalism goes f

Many people know Charles Adler as one of the co-founders of Kickstarter, the ground-breaking crowdfunding platform (now the world’s largest) that revolutionized how independent creative projects are funded globally. Now, Charles has moved onto his latest venture for independent creatives: Lost Arts, a community workshop in Chicago. A new format of workspace for ambitious creators in the 21st century, Lost Arts aims to drive innovation through open support of creativity. In this Fika break, we talk to Charles about the future of work and alternative workspaces, how you build a new kind of community for ambitious creatives (hint: by making the invisible creative visible), and the legacy of Kickstarter.

Fjord’s Daniel Freeman talks to Carla Diana, a noted robotics expert, on how we use design to set expectations in our communications with robots and explores the moral and ethical obligations as our relationships with them grow.

As the author of three internationally acclaimed books on the digital revolution (Cult of the Amateur, Digital Vertigo and The Internet Is Not the Answer), Andrew Keen has plenty of opinions on the topic—and a lot of them are controversial. In this Fika, Keen and Fjord’s Mark Curtis discuss the progression of the digital age: the role designers have in mapping out the future, what it means to be a digital company, and possible solutions to some of the more damaging and disturbing outcomes of the rise of the Internet and digitalization.

Eduardo Aguilar is head of technology at the Helix Centre, a design studio based inside an NHS hospital. In this Fika break, we talk to Eduardo about his work at the Helix Centre, how to use technology to create better health products for both carers and patients, and how to use human-centered design to improve healthcare, reduce the pain of going to a hospital and improve end-of-life care.

Does talking about design make you a better designer? In this Fika break, we talk to designer Kevin Finn about his work as editor of Open Manifesto, an independent journal that focuses on the intersection of design with social, cultural, political and economic issues issues, what networking and investing in information exchanges can do for both designers and non-designers, and his years of groundbreaking design work, including designing the TV identity of SBS, Australia’s multicultural and multilingual broadcaster, and working with Edward De Bono on his portfolio of work.

Sara Wachter-Boettcher is the author of a new book Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech from W.W. Norton. In this Fika break, we talk about algorithmic bias in everything from products and services to search results and also tackle racial and gender bias arising from broken algorithms and human missteps, Facebook and Russian ads, and the nefarious side of digital companies focused on manipulating human behavior.

ProPublica is a digital-only media company focused entirely on investigative journalism. ProPublica digs deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust, and follows those stories as long as it takes to hold power to account. And they do it as a non-profit.

It’s an interesting business model for a media company, but one that has been successful for ProPublica in its 10+-year history.ProPublica and its staff of journalists have received four Pulitzer Prizes, three Peabody Awards, two Emmy Awards and a National Magazine Award, among others, for their work. In this Fika break, we talk to Celeste LeCompte, ProPublica’s Vice President of Business Development, about combating the disinformation war, tackling the slow death of local media, and being champions of investigative and accountability journalism. We also talk about ProPublica’s business model, expansion plans and where journalism goes from here.