designswarm thoughts

This Economist article paints a vivid picture of the current situation in Japan where acceptance of technology (in this case robots) leads to maintaining closed any economic or social ties with other countries by providing for a technological solution. The fact is that Japan’s (as everyone else’s) elderly population is growing fast and instead of relying on perhaps foreign qualified workers to help that population in its health needs (which in a way would be admitting to a certain failure on their part) they are investing large amounts of money into the development of robot technology.

“What seems to set Japan apart from other countries is that few Japanese are all that worried about the effects that hordes of robots might have on its citizens. Nobody seems prepared to ask awkward questions about how it might turn out. If this bold social experiment produces lots of isolated people, there will of course be an outlet for their loneliness: they can confide in their robot pets and partners. Only in Japan could this be thought less risky than having a compassionate Filipina drop by for a chat.”

I think this is a distinct example of social circumstances shaped by technology in what i personally consider a very obtuse way…

So i was reading half interested CNN article on information overload in our society and wondered whether i was really dreaming when i read that a 22 year old thought that:

“”The library is daunting because I have to go there and everything is organized by academic area,” Quaranta said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

Were books as easily searchable as Web pages, she’d reconsider.

Otherwise, they might as well not exist.”

This in my view is an interesting conflict between the real and the virtual world. Its a visualisation problem as well, by this i mean that it reminds me of the tree/forest paradigm. When you look at the forest it might be impressive and make you think: boy ill never find the tree that i want! But inversely when you’re only looking at a tree, then another, its easy to ignore the forest or even not know how big the forest is.

So i think that books in a library give you a good understanding that knowledge is not encapsulated in that one element but that there may be others you might bump into along the way which might inspire you or allow you to make connections which would never have been possible.

Web pages are bad for that, the web is a very limited way to search or see the forest, its query based, so its only based and will only look for what you know or think you know, but seldom gives you accidental access to things you didnt know or didnt know you didnt know, as the famous mapping goes…

So my second thesis review took place in Milan this monday. It was very constructive and i got a lot of very useful feedback. Present that day were a few external people: Gillian Crampton Smith, Phil Tabor, Jochem Straatman from Cibic & Partners, Marco Palmonari from exit Consulting and finally Ashley Benigno from 3 were present and gave us great feedback. Ill post up my presentation next post…

I like this Treehugger post that talks about our inability to do things ourselves and our constant reliance if not on technology but also on the prepackaged and premade. Beyond their obvious comment about our grandparent’s skills that got developed in less happy conditions and because of heavy recession, i wonder if there isnt something there about our ability to learn how to make things, repair things and tackle them and our subsequent attachment to them. Fixing up a shelf in my friend didier’s apartment, i was thinking about the sweat and labour that goes into fixing things around you, a pair of tables that i picked up off the street a few years ago and stipped and are now in the capable hands of my best friend in Canada. The work and effort makes the object meaningful in a way. How can this be pushed with the objects that contain our digital information??? More thoughts, not much answers but leads nonetheless…

Just received news from my friend Valerie in montreal, she has received the clock and i await results anytime soon!