Tom and Jonny sit down with inventor Matt Webb, the man behind Berg, Little Printer and the poetry clock Poem/1. They dig into how he built a practice around human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, unpack the retro charm of his ageing AI clock, and go behind the scenes of the Claude-powered agents running Poem/1's Kickstarter fulfilment.
Key takeaways
Shape your role around your practice. Matt focuses on human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, rather than chasing a job title.
AI is a rubber duck, not a co-writer. Its value is helping you think aloud without replacing your voice.
Universal Basic Agency. AI can help non-experts cross the single technical hurdle blocking an idea.
Agents can turn exceptions into policy. Poem/1's fulfilment agent proposes reusable rules for a shared SOP, so problems are solved once.
Reports can reveal more than dashboards. Daily narratives surface patterns you did not know to track.
Make deliberate time to learn new tools. Matt blocks at least a day a week because the gains compound.
Building on a model means borrowed time. Poem/1 relies on a retiring model whose strange tone newer models cannot reproduce.
Poem/1 is an invisible social network. All 700 clocks show the same poem at the same moment worldwide.
Alex Hulme — founder and creative director of Approach, the industrial design agency that helped bring Poem/1 to market — approach.studio, Poem/1 case study at approach.studio/work/poem1
Tom Armitage — helped with Poem/1's firmware — tomarmitage.com
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