The Brief: How our recent past should prepare us for the age of AI

In this issue of The Brief, we’re reflecting on what we learned about the past and future of design from our conversation with Paola Antonelli (The Museum of Modern Art), Mark Wilson (Fast Company), Kate Aronowitz (GV), Mike Davidson (Microsoft), and Meaghan Choi (Anthropic). Looking back at 30 years of design by Eli Woolery Roughly thirty years ago, I was an undergrad, sitting in our dorm’s computer cluster —this was before the days when most students had laptops. I ran into something I hadn’t seen before. It was called Netscape Navigator, and it was one of the first commercial internet browsers (which our very first guest on Design Better, Irene Au, helped design). I clicked on one of the buttons (probably, “What’s Cool”), and along with a nifty loading animation, the browser took me down some early internet rabbit hole. I don’t remember where exactly I ended up, but I do remember being blown away by the experience. As a computer nerd kid in the 80’s, I had spent plenty of tim...