Good afternoon.
Thought I'd try to be like Zuck,
but I'm not as fluent in Mandarin as Zuckerberg is.
Thank you everyone.
I'd like to talk with you a little bit about
what we call "The 100-Year Plan".
If you think about a time-honored tradition,
usually when you have individuals
that you care about, that you love,
you usually move on with something to them.
Whether it be a watch,
whether it be a piece of furniture or what not.
That's what I really want to talk about
with everyone this afternoon.
Let's go back in time.
Let's go back to sometime in the early '70s.
Consumer electronics companies actually had a vision
of longevity of product design.
Unfortunately, it hasn't played out necessarily
the way they had envisioned in their advertising.
This could be the tape deck
you would leave with your grandson.
Really?
I don't think this is really a Rolex.
A Rolex does stand the test of time.
But, we believe,
my co-founders and I,
Aubrey Anderson, Jason Proctor,
those of us in Monohm,
that there is a chance for a 100 year plan,
and there's also an opportunity to share this vision
to other new start-ups,
other consumer electronics,
other product design companies around the world.
Especially as it relates to this new medium
of Internet of Things and wearables.
Over the course of my two decades
of working in this industry,
I'd have to say that a lot of the experiences
and products that I've worked on
have unfortunately ended up
at the top of the e-waste pile.
Usually the life span of one of our particular products
that we would make
usually lasts only about two years.
So when we formed this new company, Monohm,
we thought really hard.
We did a lot of internal soul-searching.
And this is interesting, because coming from America,
we don't really think past maybe 30, 40, or 50 years.
We're trying to think 100 years out,
something that is generational.
We said, "If we were going to make an object
that would be part of our lives,
how can we make it sustain 100 years,
or even longer?"
So we sought out experts, individuals,
that are also like-minded within this thinking.
We break this down into three phases.
I'm going to take you through each of the three phases.
The first is sustainable.
As one of the earlier speakers this afternoon said,
"It's not a matter of doing green architecture or green design,
every design,
every environmental experience should be green."
And I believe that as well.
I also think that when you create the experience
of the product that you're going to be
essentially sharing with your world,
those that you care about
those that will inherit this particular experience,
you need to think about what's going to go into it.
One of the things that we've been looking into is that
we do have a trash problem.
How can you make something
that can stand the test of time
and also try to fix that unique issue
and not contribute back to the problem?
There's a huge cesspool of PET bottles and trash
coming from our region, the Pacific Ocean region,
in the North Pacific.
We were looking at and studying
how can we build something
that's beautiful and architectural,
something that is really akin
that would last 100 years.
We're looking to new material sciences
and how companies like Envision Plastics
can reclaim these objects that were once created
and then disregarded into our ecosystem.
What can we actually make with that?
So we got together with a few of our
also close-minded, like-minded friends,
one of which is SurfaceInk.
They are also applying this philosophy
into the future products that they're making today.
This is one example.
It's a toy that's intended to really stand the test of time
in the wear and tear of young individuals.
But it's also sustainable.
It's created from collecting the waste,
putting it into an experience that the children will enjoy.
Yet it can gracefully degrade
and go back into the ecosystem.
The toy was designed so that it can be taken apart,
and also be disassembled and put back
and recycled into something else.
This is the like-minded thinking that we are inspired by
and that we are building our new company around.
Heirloom is another key pinnacle of
what we see as part of the 100 year plan.
If you think about heirloom as I mentioned earlier
as an example with the Sony tape deck,
(my dad actually had one of those...
I probably still have it in the garage...
maybe with Saturday Night Fever soundtrack),
you want to be able to give something.
Even if it's a piece of electronics
that you might be able to still display it
on your mantle, put it on your desk,
and it still becomes a part of your life
that you're passing down to a generation.
When you think about heirlooms,
it's not necessarily something that would
come out of the United States.
But there are also another set of like-minded individuals
that we're working very closely with
around this particular challenge,
Box Clever being one of them.
A good example of something that can be passed down
is essentially furniture.
If you think about the one object
that stands the test of time,
it's something that we use everyday,
it's functional,
it can be inherited down generationally,
that is definitely furniture.
They set out for the most recent Poise project
to create a set of extensible,
very enriching objects that generationally
will hold up and patina over the time
that will just gracefully integrate within one's lives.
The best object that anyone can design
is something that's really invisible
and that you really depend on
and it just integrates within your own life.
I think that they really have accomplished this.
And this is a really good example
that inspires us to be
and deliver that heirloom quality.
Another example, and this is something
that probably will resonance with
all of you here in Taipei.
A good friend of mine, Alexander Bazes,
changed careers.
We were just talking about entrepreneurship,
re-inventing yourself a little bit earlier.
What Alex did, was...
he was a PhD philosophy student
at the University of Kyoto
who essentially decided,
"I'm going to make swords.
I'm going to make knives in the traditional,
samurai blacksmithing technique."
And he went back, and he found a mountain,
and he started working on his craft.
And he's applying that heritage mentality
of creating some really exquisite...
(This is a picture of him in his outdoor setting)
knives that really...
If you think about using the material,
building something that can stand and wear
with the test of time,
that is something that I believe we should all
fall back to with our product design
in the near future.
Something to note about these types of technologies
whether it's metal, whether it's ceramics,
whether it's reclaimed sustainable materials,
now you'll be able to bring life and intelligence into them.
You'll be able to add brains, essentially,
creating an ancient object into a smart object.
And that is what really will surround us
within our connected homes.
And heritage.
Heritage is something that within the 100 year plan
I think in order for you to sustain that longevity
of the product experiences that you're trying to create
that can be passed down generationally
as an heirloom object,
you wanna instill a sense of heritage.
And that's something a lot of us can learn from
a lot of the Swiss companies,
the European couture brands.
We're working very closely with a group of artisans,
handcraft artisans in Kyoto,
studying, discussing, engaging with them
around their craft and how their craft can be utilized
in some of our thinking and some of the future ideas
that we're going to be bringing to market.
We call this collaboration "Kyoto California",
or "Kyo-Cali".
Essentially, the thinking behind this --
and this could be Taipei and California,
this could be London and Beijing.
The thinking about this is to take
something that's of heritage,
a craftsman experience,
and melding it with the modern.
Melding it with the technology
and the infrastructure and the entrepreneurship
of a particular area.
And in this case, it's Silicon Valley.
Because of the fusion of the two disciplines
and experiences in knowledge colliding together,
it will generate new ideas
that never would have been envisioned.
And that's part of the 100-year plan.
Kaikado. Takahiro Yagi,
who is an amazing craftsman,
and inside of his family business,
who, generationally, dating all the way back
to the early days when Kyoto was the capital,
has been making some amazing canisters
that have also started in a really refined, executed
use of storing tea.
But through the use of bringing back heirloom metals,
how the metals were made hundreds of years ago,
bringing that mentality back
into delivering these next-generation products,
he's expanded so that now they meet the needs of
chefs around the world for pasta or for coffee.
One of the incredible things about
the particular products that he makes...
(and I brought one with me just to show everyone)
This is a brand-new tea canister.
Yet it has the finish of a 100-year object.
That's also the thought and thinking that went into this.
Of the patina, how do you advance the patina?
So it might be initially really shiny like these,
but you can advance the aging and wearing of it.
The other thing that's really impressive
about this thinking of the 100-year plan
is that this has incredible warrantee.
You can bring it back 60 years from now
and they'll fix it.
And that really comes down to the precision
of hundreds of a millimeter that they have
of hand making.
The closure mechanism.
It's closing itself just by dropping it
upon the top and flushing all the air out.
That is incredible craftsmanship.
And that is something that I'd like to see
everyone of you that is in this audience
as a designer, as an entrepreneur,
as a large corporation to apply
towards all the product thinking that you do going forward.
Textiles is also something
that's really interesting to us right now.
How do you apply textiles within electronics?
This is Hosoo.
They're also a many generational
craftsman family in Kyoto,
who predominately has been known for
kimono-making, but they've got into
product design.
The types of fabrics they're working on right now
are just absolutely amazing.
They have 3D properties to them.
It's not just the sensualness of looking at the fabric,
but it's touching it, and the ripples and the textures.
Here's an example of a piece of fabric that they've done
that also has a 3D texture mapped onto
two different treatments: black and red.
Use your imagination using these heritage materials,
and try to think about how you can
create new experiences and objects
that can be sustainably handed down
over the decades to come.
They're collaborating on some old-school,
old-world techniques of how you
like you saw the machine that makes the fabric,
but they're also looking at future materials
such as polymer resins,
and how do you fuse resin with fabric
for this French designer handbag line.
That's really innovative thinking
that I really haven't seen very much of
in the past 15 years.
And then lastly, thinking about taking from the earth,
using it, and then eventually in the future
returning it to the earth.
Another company, Kohchosai Kosuga,
has been working with lacquer bamboo
to deliver really exceptional experiences
that really are used in different disciplines.
So here we have an example of a lamp
that they've done, but they do
starting off with just very hairline strips of bamboo
that could be really soft and supple to touch
and then weave them into things that are
baskets for ikebana,
or purses,
or really soft pieces of wallets
that feel like leather but it's all made out of bamboo.
This type of thinking, this synergetic collision
of product design, old-world heritage,
and technology, "Kyo-Cali",
we would like to start exploring
with other parts of the world as well.
And so I encourage all of you later on
to come up and have a discussion with me.
We'd love to share a little bit more
about what our thinking is
and what we're up to.
It all ties into what we consider to be
the "new necessities".
Things that we want to bring into our lives
that really excite us.
These architectural objects that basically
transcend into the 100-year experience.
We call these "heirloom for the future".
And we'll be talking more about this
in the months to come.
Please remember to think about
the materials you're choosing.
Make sure that they're sustainable,
they're holistic, that you're thinking about
the heirloom aspect of what you're making,
that it's not going to end
at the top of the e-waste pile.
And then also think about the longevity
from a heritage perspective.
Building your own brand,
collaborating with existing, established brands.
To really bring to our world something that's exceptional,
and can be appreciated immensely.
Think about the younger generation.
I always think about my son.
This is him standing on the beach
at Kirby Cove in San Francisco.
So with that, thank you very much.
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