July 08, 2006

In the Bubble: Designing in a complex world

We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World.

Extracts

THE SCHLOCK OF THE NEW

(Shortened version of Introduction: 2000 words)

How might we design a world in which we rely less on 'tech' - and more on people?

'In the bubble' is a phrase used by air traffic controllers to describe their state of mind, among their glowing screens and flows of information, when they are in the flow and in control. Lucky them. Most of us feel far from in control. We're filling up the world with amazing devices and systems -on top of the natural and human ones that were already here- only to discover that these complex systems seem to be out of control: too complex to understand, let alone to shape, or redirect.

Things may seem out of control -but they are not out of our hands. Many of the troubling situations in our world are the result of design decisions. Too many of them were bad design decisions, it is true- but we are not the victims of blind chance. The parlous condition of the planet, our only home, is a good example. Eighty percent of the environmental impact of the products, services, and infrastructures around us is determined at the design stage.[i] Design decisions shape the processes behind the products we use, the materials and energy required to make them, the ways we operate them on a daily basis, and what happens to them when we no longer need them. We may not have meant to do so, and we may regret the way things have turned out, but we designed our way into the situations that face us today.

Posted by Kristi at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2004

Trade: Commodities, Communication and Consciousness

Title	Trade: Commodities, Communication and Consciousness
Author	Thomas Seelig, Urs Stahel and Martin Jaeggi (eds)
Publisher	Scalo, Zurich
Date	2001
ISBN	3-908247-47-0
Reviewed by	Jane Szita
How do we interpret a world in which everything is fluid, flexible, and flowing faster than ever before? In what ways can we accurately reflect the reality of ‘global’ trade, the quasi-religious power of consumerism, and the spectral flows of information which determine today’s economic and political landscapes? That was the starting point for this book, and for the exhibition (staged at the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Nederlands Foto Instituut, 2002), behind it. Photographs by over 60 artists, photographers, advertising agencies, magazines, and corporate reports, are complemented by texts ranging from philosophy and economic theory, to quips from politicians and pundits. The effect is of a kind of devil’s scrapbook, a visual journey through a diverse collection of images from the blandly banal and seductively glossy, to the unnervingly revealing and deeply moving. The first pages illustrate urban landscapes (Los Angeles, Tokyo), followed by the weirdly sanitised images of American malls and corporate HQs by Marc Räder. They are followed by idealised images of consumer ‘lifestyles’: bodies in a club, bodies on a beach, and bodies bedecked in jewellery at Cannes. These lead into a dense assortment of images depicting all of life — from food to sex - as commodities, accompanied by David Bosshart’s assertion that, “shopping has become the most fundametal act in all areas of life” (David Bosshart). Then the focus changes to production, from high-tech cleanrooms to child labour on the fraying edges of the global economy. Distribution follows, then the dissenting voices of Greenpeace, its tiny boats taking on Goliath-like whaling ships, and protests during the WTO conference in Seattle (1999). Finally, refuse and recycling are pictured, with images of ‘garbage kids’ in Manila juxtaposed with textual references to the psychic waste of a world in perpetual motion, in which “failure is the great modern taboo,” (Richard Sennett), and life is rendered meaningless by a system in which, “the object, which lasts, matters more the subject” (George Bataille). So the book itself embodies a kind of sinister flow from appearance to reality, from a Western urban vision bathed in consumerist delusion, to the impoverished, polluted reality of rotting, useless excess in the dumps of the Philippines.

Posted by Books Editor at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)