Kestral, technologist & writer in London
“I’ve spent the last 25 years working in the technology industry. I spend my time connecting with people, building, working on new ideas, and trying to fit in a little downtime now and then. When I’m not working, I love to cook, I love to experiment with food. I watch a lot of videos about that, read a lot of food blogs around that.
I love the idea that anyone can be a gourmet chef. I am a little bit obsessed with Master Chef. So I spend a lot of time trying to perfect some of the things that I have seen on there or on YouTube videos. I go down rabbit holes of trying to work out how to flambé or how to get the perfect sear on a piece of salmon and things like that. I spend a lot of time getting into the science of food and cooking.”
Thinking about a house
“I’m convinced that the next big leap in innovation is around contextual computing. I often use the analogy of being inside a house when I think about how Surf and context works. Right now I am in the front door looking in.
And if I want to go into the kitchen, and start cooking, I am in a very specific context.
Say I am making Thanksgiving dinner. There is a lot of prep involved. I’ve got my meat station over there, dessert is happening in this part of the room, cold stuff is in the fridge, I’ve got something defrosting in the sink, and my cutlery over here. I’ve set up the spatial elements just right for that project I’m working on.
But that doesn’t mean the rest of my house doesn’t exist, or that I’m not thinking about the fact that something might be happening in the living room or that my cat might be asleep in the bathroom.”
Context switching
“When I walk back into the kitchen, I don’t expect to have to set up the pots and pans again, get out the spoon again. Everything should be exactly where I left it and I should be able to literally jump back in when I switch to that room, into that context.
What I love about Surf is the fact that I can make use of this idea. If I’m working on a project, I can put things exactly where I need them. Then I can switch out of that context, into something else, and then switch back again knowing that something is going to be exactly where I left it. I’m not in thousand tab hell.”
Personal planning
“Right now, Surf is helping me collect ideas for things to do in my personal life. We approaching the holidays, Christmas and New Year. I’m already starting to plan in terms of food, in terms of decor, in terms of places to go. It also allows me to think about the clients I’m working with and enabling them to grow. And doing research for my own thing.”
What’s next
“We spend so many hours in front of our devices. We use them for more than one thing. People are not just their jobs. People are not just their hobbies. People are not just what they are doing at any moment in time.
No-one has managed to crack this contextually aware computing thing that will completely change our lives. I can see Surf completely removing the silos between different things in my mind, in my work and in my personal life and being able to really understand and highlight new parts of me as a person, that makes each thing that I do better.
And that’s one of the most exciting things about Surf. You can see the future in this product in a way that I haven’t seen in so many products.”