Can Soulfully Crafted Tech build the Community we deserve?
1on1 with Design Strategists Steven White & Ashley Lukasik and Davion Ziere, founder of Origyn, a community-based alternative to Amazon.
Davion Ziere is a provocative young entrepreneur on a mission to create what he calls “soulful technology”. He recently connected with design strategists Steven White and Ashley Lukasik, who are facilitating the second installment of “Future of Evidence”– part of Breakout’s year-long workshop series around the future of pioneering ideas, funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation–for which Ziere is the grantee.
What was originally intended to be an introductory and planning call quickly branched off in a much more interesting direction, covering everything from biomimicry to Tesla to the power of dreams. One of the things we love most about the Breakout community is how our passionate network nurtures one another’s creative capacity.
If you’re looking to be inspired, read on…
Davion Ziere: I’ll be honest with you, I’m not a fan of Zoom’s privacy policies. I think they’re the worst.
Ashley Lukasik: I’m curious to hear what you have to say about that.
DZ: They’re just bad. You have zero privacy on zoom. As a matter of fact, if the police or the government requests any of your materials, they will provide them with no question, no consent from you. You’ve already given your consent. They don’t even have to notify you. And I just don’t agree with it.
AL: Steven and I would agree that we find ourselves in a difficult position by allowing big tech to change behavior and culture in a lot of ways, such as privacy. It’s something that we spend a lot of time talking about. What are your thoughts on the matter? We don’t assume an anti-tech stance but we advocate for paying attention to your intentions and also to the unintended consequences of building something that’s economically powerful but that might be unethical or problematic in other ways.
DZ: I feel that it’s really important to have more soulfully crafted technology. It relates to the dialogue about equity and who’s building what. If it’s only a few people, naturally you’re going to get technology that is exploitative in some way.
I’m not anti-tech, either. I think that technology is a wonderful development that we have the opportunity to leverage for the health of communities. But in order for that to happen, we do need things to be developed more holistically, and by many parties.
“In the case of Origyn, I see the capability needing to reflect the community. I see the community having the opportunity to have some form of ownership, whether it be through a trust or intellectual property. ”
We’re at a unique intersection in history where we not only have the momentum of the people saying things like, hey, we need different things, but we also have the platforms to actually make those things happen. And there’s enough collective awareness that we can agree that’s okay, somehow this needs to be the case. But it’s not going to come from approaching things the same way. It actually has nothing to do with technology, in my opinion, and everything to do with the people that are grasping and cultivating.
AL: I love what you said about soulfully crafted technology. Have you ever read this article that David Byrne wrote three or four years ago? He was talking about engineers that are driving the development of technology and big tech companies, and how so many of them are introverted males who presume it’s a benefit to create technologies that limit your interaction with other human beings. With Uber, you could conceivably get into a vehicle and not even have to speak to the driver. That’s presumed to be a benefit because one, the less human labor that’s involved in a transaction, the cheaper it is. And two, the idea that not having interaction is a good thing.
DZ: I think we lean into it but I think it’s because we’re coming back to ourselves. It’s just really important to be mindful of… if we’re leaning into it, what is it that we’re leaning into? The heart still desires to have that connection. And so we just have to figure out how to forge that in an organic way, that also in a way that does not cheapen the value of a person.
That’s something I’ve discovered through creating Origyn is that really, it’s about the community piece. My goal is to provide people with accurate reflections of our own economic activity and our own economic footprint. Because most of the time, we only have these big numbers, like, this community is worth $17 trillion. Like how Spotify does the end-of-year rap of how much you listen to different artists and genres. Could you do that for your own spending? It’s really important for people not to feel judged in that process too. You want people to set their own goal, their own value–-hey, this is what I want to do.s.
I see what we’re building as awareness technology, as well as alignment technology that helps people align with the values that they have, so we can live more authentically.
Steven White: Can you talk a little bit more about how you’ve managed and how people are also coming back to themselves and being more present.
AL: I think what’s been interesting about the COVID scenario and confronting people, is that it represents a lot of contradictory truths. As human beings, we have a really hard time holding the space for contradictory information. On the one hand, people have felt really isolated and depressed and anxious, and have also felt more present and maybe perhaps, that they needed to slow down and remove themselves from the hyper consumption that characterized the pre-pandemic. The same person can have both of those experiences.
DZ: Well, the best person to nurture a person I believe, is yourself. I feel like what makes people feel so nurtured by this platform is that they’re nurturing themselves. Our thesis is that anything our communities need, our communities can be and can provide. We need to begin to see ourselves as our own source, which is something we struggle with, right, because we struggle with validation issues and we live in a system in which we’re constantly seeking validation. So we have what they call “insecurity”. Which is interesting, because insecurity is related to trust. If I don’t trust myself, then am I a trusted party? We want to facilitate a movement saying that hey, we actually have value. It’s circular. It’s cyclical, it’s nurturing. It’s literally like the lifecycle of a woman in that it flushes itself out, it cleans, it clears.
Right now we’re basically throwing our money into a hot air balloon that never comes back. It may rain every now and then but it’s not intentional at all. I’m a fan of biomimicry. I study rivers and all kinds of stuff.
SW: I’m really into biomimicry as well. And I like this idea that it should be like an ecosystem, right? Where you spend the money, it vaporizes, and rains back down on your community instead of it just being sucked out by big corporations, etc.
DZ: Yes. 100%. An Ecosystem is the perfect way to describe it and that’s why we established a nonprofit. 10% of what we make automatically goes into the ecosystem and is able to recycle in the community and reinvest back. But also the model centered around communities and our cap table will reflect the community.
If what Origyn ended up doing was establishing the model that was imitated and replicated I would be happy because I just really want to establish a precedent for nurturing that mirrors the natural process of the planet. Just like how a woman’s body works, the planet works that way when we’re doing what we need to do to take care of it.
SW: So good. Who or what organizations have inspired you, or continue to?
DZ: I pull from different things, but maybe organizations inspire me that are the antithesis of what Origyn is. The polar opposite. Amazon. Yeah, Amazon.
“Am I mad at Jeff Bezos for doing what he’s done? I really believe he just made a choice. He saw the future going in a direction, and he went in that direction. I have compassion in the sense that perhaps he didn’t have the experience where he lived in different communities. He never developed empathy for people in these ways or saw that it could create more shared wealth in the world. ”
— Davion Ziere
AL: For the first round of our Future of Evidence Workshop, we had people watch the social dilemma. When you see that, it’s clear that most of the people responsible for building this stuff really thought that they were providing a benefit. If you have blinders on at the outset as to what the unintended consequences could be, then you can find yourself in a position creating heavily problematic things that we are now looking to dismantle.
I want to acknowledge your use of the word “polarize” because we’ve been talking about polarized points of view quite a bit in our discussions related to evidence, specifically around the cultural and political dialogue that’s taking place, and how the same information can be used to push people in completely opposite directions. So it becomes a kind of like, how relevant or true is that data? It’s kind of only as relevant or true as it is contextualized. But I hadn’t thought about the idea of a positive spin on polarization.
DZ: Of course, we’re talking about this polarity, but I see it as a spectrum. Between those poles is a world of color, different shades, and hues. If we were looking at the sound spectrum, or the color spectrum, or light spectrum, they all have that in-between. Where do I want to land? And the answer is, I don’t really want to land in the middle of it. However, I would rather land in the middle than on the one extreme, and the only way for me to get to the middle from one pole is to go to the other pole. I’m a fan of alchemy, so I studied how chemists do things. They Unite opposing forces, which means you have to look at two poles and figure out how you bring them together and unify, which is wild.
The people who’ve inspired me the most, are people who’ve embodied that and community. I talk about women because the people who wanted to do this in my childhood and in my work community are women. Angela Davis said, “to lift as we climb”. Compassion is to go together, to suffer together.
“Passion is like suffering. It’s endurance. It provides us with a clear direction. ”
— Davion Ziere
SW: What’s your burning platform? What would you say is the “Why” motivator for you.
DZ: I spent a couple of years working for Tesla. The reason why I went to work for Tesla is that it was an organization that I felt like was actually making a bet on a different type of future related to sustainability.
AL: Accelerating progress.
DZ: Yes, his mission was to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport originally, and then it evolved to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. And to me, I want to accelerate or cultivate our world movement. We haven’t gotten to the evolutionary nature of who we are and how rich we are in these different ways, and how sometimes you just wake up and it’s just not that day. Where’s the space for that? I’m creating.
SW: What you’re saying about exploring who we are evolutionary, are we really talking about the business of living and being ourselves? Do you think that our systems are imprisoning us, or are they oppressing us to the point where we can’t do that in the current…
DZ: Well, yes. There’s something that resonated with me, and I don’t remember where it came from. It was this question of can we love without domesticating someone else to our point of view. We domesticate our animals, we domesticate things to our liking to be cute and adorable. And we want people to make us money, as opposed to appreciating the beauty of a thing and giving to it and giving back.
We’re trying to do things in order to find the requirements for a system that doesn’t focus on us being ourselves.
AL: Maybe the goal is not to scale. Maybe the goal is to solve a real problem in your community. And that’s enough. And maybe the scale isn’t about getting bigger and owning. Maybe scale is about creating a model that can be replicated appropriately in a different kind of local or cultural, economic, or political context. That was a hard concept for people to get to because they’re used to thinking in a business mindset. Our entire economy is built on “bigger is better”.
SW: If you don’t have the vision to see, or–and this is another Elon Musk thing–sometimes being smart is about not about getting answers, but it’s if we know the right questions to ask. You’re a son of the system. You’re a son of Silicon Valley. And now you come back with this message, you went through a hero’s journey, and you come back to the people to say, there is another way. You’re obviously highly educated in technology. How come you didn’t become part of it?
DZ: I always saw myself as one of the people. I grew up in Oakland, Atlanta, Jackson, Mississippi, South Africa. These are places that spawned revolutionary movements. In Atlanta, there’s the civil rights movement, and artists like OutKast with something to say. In Oakland, you have the Black Panther movement, speakers booming out of people’s cars, scraper bikes, and grandmas sharing sugar and bread from house to house. In Jackson, Mississippi, I went to a high school that had just been integrated from segregation, nine years prior to me getting there. So when I went to the cafeteria, I saw black on the left side and white on the right side, and the only people who crossed it were athletes who played together. So, you know, with these experiences, when I got to college, I was thinking to myself how do I leverage all this experience that I have, and put it together in a way that can help kids like me? My first real project was writing a curriculum for the National Children’s Defense Fund.
I left Tesla, when I became the number one sales leader. I was the youngest person doing it. Ultimately, that led to the company leaders flying me to the east coast, from the west coast, just to have meetings and be like, can you tell us about your practices?” What I was able to gain from my experience at Tesla was how do you scale something that is focused on impact first.
AL: I’ve noticed that you need to completely change your mindset and have a different frame around what it is that you’re trying to do.
DZ: I am here to be true to myself. So yeah, I left and took a huge risk. I mean, I left in the height of that, like, people aren’t “What? Why would you leave when Elon just, you know, shouted you out to the whole company?” And I’m like, “for the same reason why he would be moved to do something like that is the same reason why I should leave. I’m being who I am.”
“I see myself as a bridge-builder. I feel like my purpose on this planet at this time is to be a world bridger. ”
— Davion Ziere
AL: When I read your website, I saw words like harmony and peace. Balancing things. I was like, is a good company. Thank you for providing the space.
Our exploration of the Future of Evidence Design Thinking Workshop is led by Design Thinking Strategists, Ashley Lukasik and Steven White. Ashley is Co-Founder of Murmur-Ring, helping organizations accomplish their strategic aims through immersive encounters, collective discourse, and storytelling. Steven is founder of Seven Studio, certified instructor at LUMA Institute and adjunct faculty at IIT Institute of Design, from which he holds a Masters in Design and Innovation Methods.
