Fourteen years ago, I sat down with Ryan Janzen, and his title said it all:

Jarring is What We Need.

Ryan is an engineer and a composer. He builds bridges between electrical #engineering, #physics, and #music. He also plays the hydraulophone, an instrument you sound by touching jets of water.

Think about that. Not strings. Not keys. Water.

Most people chase technology for its own sake. Ryan asked a harder question. Why are we building this? What is it for? He worried openly about careerism in both the arts and the sciences, about the quiet drift toward doing things simply because we can.

That worry has aged well. In an age of #AI abundance and endless capability, the scarce resource is not the How. It is the Why.

Ryan reminded me that the natural order is not a law. It is an assumption. And assumptions are meant to be questioned. Sometimes the most useful thing an innovator can do is jar us awake, make the familiar strange again, and force us to ask what we stopped asking.

Vibrating water into song is a small act of rebellion against the obvious. We could use more of those.

What assumption in your field is overdue for a good jarring?

Watch or listen to the full conversation with Ryan Janzen here: [ https://snglrty.co/46zHIOt](https://snglrty.co/46zHIOt)

Engineering researcher, composer, entrepreneur and hydraulophone player Ryan Janzen talks about technology, music, nature and ethics.