"We all crave more humanity, more tactility, more contact with the real world. And AI done in the right way can be agentic and behind the scenes and be this kind of laid intelligence that sits underneath everything but doesn't need to shout for your attention."

David Sheldon-Hicks and his team at Territory Studios build the future for a living, from the interfaces in Dune, The Martian, Guardians of the Galaxy to the real screens in Audis and Cadillacs. So I was excited to have him, and Perry Mason, Territory's head of digital, on the show to explore what's coming next.

David expects the future will be less like Marvel (maximalist, everything screaming for your attention) and more like Dune (analog, tactile, with deep intelligence sitting quietly underneath). He calls this "quiet tech" and thinks it's exactly what we're starting to crave.

We also explore:

What it takes to build near-future interfaces for Hollywood films that are believable in context, yet just out of reach in today's reality
Why exploring dystopian fears can lead to better product design
Building a live 3D map of the entire planet — and the moment they realized they were designing the plot of a Bond film
Why anything genuinely valuable stays hard to make: David's pushback on "Hollywood is cooked" and the wave of AI hype promising $10 blockbusters
Humanoid robots as universal adapters: Why the world being built for human-shaped things might be the whole case for human-shaped machines

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