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The future deserves better questions. Curious & Inspired is a cultural commentary show exploring tech, culture, and society, hosted by Matt Vandrick. New episodes Bi-Weekly, Thursdays at 8PM.
Canva's $6,000,000,000 empire has a woman founder leading the charge. A founder from Bed Stuy is changing how we buy black. A Pennsylvania farmer turned down $15,000,000 to protect his land and my thoughts on why now more than ever it's critical to guard your energy from the algorithm. All that and more on this episode of Curious and Inspired. Welcome to a brand new episode of Curious and Inspired.
Matt Vandrick:I am your host, Matt Bandrake. So glad to be here with y'all. It is Women's History Month. And so in honor of that, we'll be talking about stories that acknowledge women in tech. Let's get into it, shall we?
Matt Vandrick:Seen on the Internet. Everybody loves Canva. Canva is your favorite creator's favorite creative tool, and you may or may not have known that it has a woman founder. Melanie Perkins, turned a simple graphic design platform into a $6,000,000,000 juggernaut. And if you're discussing women in tech, I feel like you can't not talk about Melanie.
Matt Vandrick:Over the years, market share for Canva has seen exponential growth that doesn't appear to be slowing down. Last summer, they dropped what they're calling the creative operating system, a powerhouse that connects design, brand management, and marketing execution all in one place. This launch includes a complete rebuild of Visual Suite, their design AI model that's trained specifically on editable outputs. They're not playing, and they continue to put more and more pressure on industry staples like Adobe. As a designer, I see the value in Canva, and clearly, so do a lot of y'all.
Matt Vandrick:Shout out to Melanie and the team. The official Black Wall Street, started as a website back in 2015 revolutionizing the buy black movement. Founded by Mandy Bowman, this was a game changer for shoppers looking to discover local black owned businesses, products, and services. The name itself is powerful. It honors Tulsa's prosperous black business district that thrived until a white mob destroyed it in 1921.
Matt Vandrick:Bowman's vision has attracted serious backing from PayPal and Mastercard and now lists thousands of black owned businesses from more than 10 countries across the globe. And I gotta give a special shout out to Mandy because she's from Best Buy as am I. Shout to Brooklyn. Shout to the whole New York, actually. I mean, this is what we do.
Matt Vandrick:What what more can I say? One last story, not specifically connected to women's history month, but certainly worth noting, tech wants to be closer to the community. NVIDIA is considering a partnership with a high school in Hinsdale, Illinois to bring AI directly into the classroom. At a recent school board meeting, NVIDIA reps represented their AI program called StudyFetch, which serves both teachers and students. For teachers, it customizes lessons for each student based on their individual strengths.
Matt Vandrick:For students, it creates channels for meaningful feedback to teachers. Further, Meta just announced their AI glasses impact grants to support US based organizations using their AI glasses to drive positive societal and economic value. They're awarding 25 accelerator grants, recipients will join the Meta wearables community, a network of innovators, researchers, and developers pushing the boundaries of wearable tech. Now while some may frame this as just meta collecting data on how best to market their product, which I agree that it is, it's at least a nod to the value that they see in understanding how their products will affect real users in society. It's community outreach and capitalism working hand in hand.
Matt Vandrick:This week, signals versus noise. Up first, according to aol.com, a Pennsylvania farmer named Mervyn Routebaugh just turned down a staggering 15,000,000 offer from developers who wanted to convert his 260 anchor property into a data center. Instead of cashing out, he made a different choice. Radabaugh entered a conservation easement to protect the land for future generations, ensuring it stays exactly what it's been for over half a century, farmland. He's lived and worked on this land for more than fifty years.
Matt Vandrick:Every anchor holds personal memories, family history, and a connection that no dollar amount can replace. So rather than sell out, he sold the development rights for approximately $2,000,000 to a land trust, guaranteeing the property remains agricultural forever. Data centers are aggressively expanding into rural Pennsylvania, and the state is hemorrhaging farmland at an alarming rate. An estimated 1,200 acres disappear every single week. So this is a signal, and it's one worth watching because as more farmers learn about the real cost and dangers of data centers, the environmental impact, the strain on local resources, the permanent transformation of their communities, I expect we'll see more farmers taking a stand like Reitabaud did.
Matt Vandrick:He allegedly had been approached by developers so relentlessly and so frequently that it crossed the line into harassment. It got so bad that he had to seek legal protection just to get them off his back. His decision is bigger than one farm. It's one man's choice to draw his boundary. He made a choice some people can't, that there are things that are, in fact, worth more than money.
Matt Vandrick:Artificial intelligence tools are more likely to provide incorrect medical advice when the misinformation comes from what the software considers to be an authoritative source, according to a report in Reuters. And according to research done by Lancet Digital Health, 20 open source large language models were repeatedly tricked by mistakes embedded in realistic looking doctor's notes, while it was far less able to find mistakes in casual social media conversations. It's strangely similar to medical bias, whether implicit or conscious. It echoes the same patterns we see with gender bias in health care when women's pain is routinely dismissed, downplayed, or undertreated because their symptoms don't match what's in the textbook of what a doctor expects to see. AI makes the same mistakes that humans make.
Matt Vandrick:We've essentially trained machines to replicate our bias, our blind spots, and assumptions. The good thing is that while these AI tools are making these mistakes now, there's a lane wide open for people that wanna innovate in this space. This problem doesn't strike me as long term or unsolvable. It's a flaw that can and will be addressed through better training data, more sophisticated verification systems, and smarter algorithms. And for that reason, I'm calling this both a noise and a signal.
Matt Vandrick:It's a noisy headline, but the opportunity for innovation is a signal. The integration of AI into the medical field is incredibly promising. This will get corrected, but it's something we need to be paying attention to as technology develops. And I look forward to all the innovation we'll see in the medical AI category in the future. According to TechCrunch, a hacktivist just scraped more than half a million payment records from a provider of consumer grade stalkerware, phone surveillance apps, exposing email addresses and partial payment information of customers who literally paid money to spy on other people.
Matt Vandrick:So that means over 500,000 records of people who thought they could secretly monitor someone else have now been monitored and stalked. The leaked transactions contain records of payments for phone tracking services like Geofinder and UMobix, as well as services like PeakViewer, formerly known as Glassogram, which claim to allow users access to private Instagram accounts. These are just a few of the monitoring and tracking apps provided by the same vendor, a Ukrainian company called Structura. So we're talking about tools designed specifically for surveillance, stalking, and invasion of privacy. Tools that enable abusive partners, jealous exes, controlling family members to track every move, every message, every moment of another person's digital life.
Matt Vandrick:So this is a signal because it wasn't some random cyber attack. This was a hacktivist making a statement. They exposed the customers, the people doing the spying, and in doing so, they turned the tables. The watchers became the watched. And I think this is just the beginning.
Matt Vandrick:If consumers continue to feel that the government isn't going to step up and protect their privacy or their data, and let's be honest, most people don't have faith in that ever happening. So I expect we're going to see a lot more hacktivists like this stepping into the void. They're taking it upon themselves to balance the scales and to hold companies accountable when the law won't do it and to expose the people who think they can operate in the shadows without repercussions. This is vigilante justice in the digital age, and whether you agree with the methods or not, it is filling a gap that regulators and lawmakers have left wide open. When the systems designed to protect us fail, people find other ways to fight back.
Matt Vandrick:So this hacktivage just fired a warning shot to every snorkelware company out there. Your customers aren't as anonymous as you promised them that they would be. And frankly, good. If you're paying to secretly track and surveil someone without their consent, you deserve to have your information exposed. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Matt Vandrick:This is a signal that the era of consequence free digital surveillance is coming to an end, one data breach at a time. Startups, investors, and social media entrepreneurs in Washington state are absolutely losing their minds over senate bill sixty three forty six, popularly known as the millionaire's tax. They are clutching their pearls over a 9.9% tax on personal adjusted gross income exceeding 1,000,000 per year. So we're talking about a tax that targets less than 1% of the wealthiest households in Washington state. This proposal aims to raise approximately 3,700,000,000.0 annually for state services, money that could fund schools, infrastructure, health care, and all the things that make a functioning society actually function.
Matt Vandrick:So why should we care about this particular tax drama? Because major tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta, Cloudflare, and Nintendo all have massive presence in Washington state. The hand wringing crowd is warning that if the bill passes, all the tech millionaires will pack up and flee to tax havens leaving Washington's economy in ruins. Except where they gonna go? People here in New York City said the same thing about the new mayor Mamdani's budget proposals as well.
Matt Vandrick:It's a popular American pastime to raise holy hell at the mere suggestion of taxing the wealthy. The second anyone proposes asking millionaires to contribute a little bit more to the society that enabled their success, the outrage machine kicks into overdrive. Look. The rich aren't taxed nearly as much as the rhetoric suggests. And when they are, they find ways around it.
Matt Vandrick:So will senate bill sixty three forty six ever actually get passed? Who knows? I doubt it. But even if it does pass, there's another layer to all of this. The people who own multiple homes, and most of them do, they find tax loopholes.
Matt Vandrick:They could establish residency in Texas, Florida, Nevada, or any other state without income tax and boom. Problem solved. So spare me this fake outrage. The system is designed with enough escape hatches that the truly wealthy will be just fine. The millionaires will stay.
Matt Vandrick:The tax will either fail or get watered down, and life in this Pacific Northwest will continue exactly as it has before. This is noise, just as it always has been. Typically, when I sit down to write the thought of the week, I really let the energy flow through me. I think what's the vibe of the world? What am I contemplating, observing, learning that could be made into something worth sharing with y'all?
Matt Vandrick:And all I could really think about was how dark the world feels right now. And then I thought about how much the feeds we scroll every day are a major gateway to that darkness. So I thought, how do we protect ourselves? How do we engage without being overwhelmed and consumed by it? So let's take that premise and then layer on the fact that it is women's history month.
Matt Vandrick:We're all affected by the feeds we scroll and the algorithms on these platforms, but there is also a specific playbook for women. I know the feed hits different depending on who you are. So I was raised by women. My mother, my grandmother, aunts, elder cousins, played a major role in my formative years. And there's something I remember my granny always saying.
Matt Vandrick:She said, never let anyone steal your joy. Despite the times that may have been harder than others growing up, I watched my mom work hard, my granny work two jobs before she finally retired, and overall just carrying the weight of the world while still ensuring the home was filled with warmth and love. Now fast forward to today and a lot of those same notions still apply to most families. But now that's compounded by the external forces we're exposed to on the platforms we use every single day. Every time you open your phone, there's something new of all colors.
Matt Vandrick:Yes. There are fun and entertaining and lighthearted things, but as a news source lately, everything feels destabilizing. Epstein documents, war, political chaos. It's the kind of news that makes you question everything and everyone around you. And it's not just the fact that the information exists, it's that it's being served to you constantly by an algorithm that benefits from your emotional responses.
Matt Vandrick:Have you ever had a moment where you opened your phone and immediately regretted it? A specific instance where the feed shifted your entire mood before you even got out of bed? That's par for the course when these screens are gateway to the outside world. You tend to take on what you consume in unhealthy doses. The guard your energy message applies to everyone, but for women, the algorithm has been fine tuned with a specific kind of precision.
Matt Vandrick:Diet culture, beauty standards, mommy guilt, career pressure, relationship advice, fitness, self care, and wellness content that turns leisure into another optimization problem. The feed knows what makes women click. And a lot of what makes women click is content that says you're not quite there yet. Not thin enough, not successful enough, not put together enough. Always one product, one program, one hack away from finally being enough.
Matt Vandrick:And all of that is by design. The algorithm has figured out that inadequacy drives engagement, and it's been deploying that against all of us, but especially women for years. Current events compel me to remind y'all of the dots that I think are worth connecting. If your future is influenced by your behavior and your behavior is influenced by your state of mind and your state of mind is influenced by a feed of content you don't control, you have to understand the gravity of being intentional with how you engage with it. And this applies to everyone, but the content women are being served is often specifically engineered to destabilize confidence, to create comparison, to make rest feel like laziness, and ambition feel like selfishness.
Matt Vandrick:Like my granny said, don't let anyone steal your joy, but you also can't let content you didn't ask for steal it either. I'm starting to understand that now more than ever. We are targeted with ads every day. That's advertising one zero one. Right?
Matt Vandrick:They know who we are, and they serve us content designed to make us buy things. But so why then couldn't the same notion be used to shift emotional states globally? What's the difference between a brand targeting audiences to boost sales and a platform targeting audience to shift how they feel about themselves? Your emotional state is a product of the feed, and and the resulting behavior is a resource for it. The excitement of an ad that drives you to add to cart, the outrage of clickbait that makes you argue in the comments, the fitness gurus that make you question your body image, all emotions and behaviors served up from the same source.
Matt Vandrick:The algorithm didn't invent emotional triggering through media, but it certainly industrialized it for the emerging age, making it so habitual and commonplace that you don't even really stop to consider that you're an active participant. There is nothing casual about scrolling a feed. It is not mindless. It is not passive. It is active dynamic participation that is now your main lever to maintaining your control in a world increasingly set up for you to relinquish it.
Matt Vandrick:Intentful engagement is a superpower for everyone, but especially for anyone the algorithm has specifically learned to destabilize. It is important to stay informed, but I encourage you to consider this. What would it look like to stay engaged enough to be informed, but energized enough to be able to make decisions with that information? What would anyone build if their mind was clear? What would anyone pursue if their energy was protected?
Matt Vandrick:The woman who raised me didn't have the language for protect your energy necessarily, but they practiced it. In church, in joy, family gatherings, music, cooking. That was how we coped as a family and as a greater community. The woman that raised me mastered the art of saying, look, what's going on out there is absolutely nuts, but in this house, there's love, there's support, there's safety. We have to return to some of that, even if it's just in your own mind.
Matt Vandrick:They knew before the algorithm, before the feed, before any of this, that what you let in shapes how you feel. And that shapes who you are, and then that shapes how you navigate the world. Imagine what you could do in a world guided by energy of your own choosing. Guard your energy from the algorithm. This women's history month and every month.
Matt Vandrick:As always, stay curious. Stay inspired. So now ask Matt. As someone who works in tech, what advice do you have for women who want to break into tech? Oh, it's a good one.
Matt Vandrick:Okay. So I think a couple of things. I think that the baseline is the same. You know, I don't have a secret pedigree for breaking into tech as a woman specifically. I think the same rules generally apply across the board as it relates to just finding a job in tech.
Matt Vandrick:Right? Like, stay on top of the latest tools. Stay aware of how AI is impacting your particular sector, be it engineering, design, finance, marketing, you name it. One thing I would say though is to keep a wide lens on what working in tech means to you. So I've had the luxury of working in a variety of different industries that you wouldn't associate with tech necessarily.
Matt Vandrick:Years ago when I was at Guilt Group, the ecommerce brand, when I worked there, was still very much in startup mode. And on the outside, was glossy fashion forward powerhouse that really pioneered the idea of online flash sample sales. Under the hood though, it was very much a tech startup. I had the pleasure of working at L'Oreal, the number one beauty conglomerate in the world, and now they actually call it the number one beauty tech company in the world. And it's true because there's so much science and technology all up and through that place.
Matt Vandrick:From the actual product formulations to the packaging to the strategy of how they run their ecommerce businesses, there are pockets of it that are very, very tech forward and innovation centered. And so and I use those as just examples just to say, find the industry that makes you tick. What products or companies excite you? And then look for tech roles within those as well. It doesn't always have to be, quote, big tech to work in tech.
Matt Vandrick:So be curious, explore, don't limit yourself to just the expected options. There are a lot of ways to make money, but the best way to do it in my opinion is when you're doing something you truly enjoy. And that is the show, ladies and gentlemen. Happy Women's History Month. I had a great time here with you today.
Matt Vandrick:I can't wait to see you on the next episode. As always, stay curious, stay inspired, y'all be good. Peace. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to comment, and subscribe. And stay tuned for new episodes, Thursdays biweekly at 8PM.
Matt Vandrick:Connect more with me at curiousinspired dot com and curiousinspired on all socials. Thanks for watching. As always, stay curious, stay inspired. Y'all be good. Peace.