As echos of Half-Life 2 from the other room force me into headphones mode, it made me think about the ways in which entertainment likes to make us see the future. Games, comics (hmm, sorry graphic novels) and movies show us a future where things have gone wrong, dystopian, weird and dark.
In design however, we usually design for a better future. Always making things better, more efficient, making people happier, better citizens, better parents, better neighbours…. better better better more more more.
So when it comes to sustainability, we have to be better better better and do more more more even if the future looks grim and apocalyptic. Like the 2 sides of a same coin, we’re asking people to live with 2 different concepts: hope and despair.
Or maybe we’re just better off planning for the worse.
Since I’m involved with way too much technology, leading activities for tinker.it! in London, and helping out Tom with thinking about the future internet of things, I suppose it’s only normal I’m also spending time on technology-light projects as well.
I worked on to&fro(muji) with Dave last August and we submitted the idea to the Muji Award 02. The second edition of this international conference, the theme this year was “re”. Re-do, re-use, re-think etc…
We focused on reviving a lost art of letter writing. Taking the idea of RE-spond, RE-use and RE-think, we wanted to inject this activity with some of the components of it’s more modern counterpart: email.
The reversible envelope allows you to write the name of the sender and receiver once. As you write your letter on the perforated letter-paper provided, you can choose to tear the leftovers after you’re done (leaving no space for a reply if it’s a “dear john” kind of letter :) ) or not. Put your letter in and fold up the envelope and make sure your “to” will match the adress you’ve written down. Put a stamp on the right hand corner and send it.
The person who receives it gets to open the envelope and reply with the space you’ve left, deciding whether to keep your letter or not. He/she simply reverses the envelope (as the adress turns from “from” to “to”) includes her reply and sends it along.
Check out the Flickr set for this project.
Enjoy!
“There is a sense in which this minimal gestural system is essential, for without it all this abstract power would become meaningless.
Man has to be reassured about his power by some sense of participation, albeit a merely formal one.
So the gestural system of control must be deemed indispensable- not to make the system work technically- for more advanced technology could (and no doubt will) make it unnecessary. but rather, to make that system work psychologically”
The system of Objects is definitely a great read for all designers, especially when you consider it was written in 1968!
There’s something here of a commentary about future-casting. This well respected activity often associates itself with what I call the “convergence wet-dream”. In the future, everything should flow, every part of our life, objects, services, information is intricately linked, responsive and autonomous, tending to our every need on a sub atomic level of understanding. No more work, all play: homo ludens.
But of course everything so far leads us to think that will not be the case. Inconsistent systems, platforms that don’t speak to one another, variations in systems across countries, etc…
Beyond technology however, the biggest roadblock to this dream is man himself, because of this need for gestural control, this physical “ok” linked to our understanding of the world around us. Is that bad? I don’t think it is. It will make sure the future keeps being “human”, with everything that entails.
(Made me think of this, if you’ve seen the movie, you know what happens next)
Before attending thishappened last night I was invited by Garrick Jones to attend an informal discussion on web2.0 hosted at the Hospital, a very chichi private club in Soho.
Nothing could have been more further away from how I thought businessmen perceive the value of the now 3 year old term. I should have known better, of course and quickly recalled a client who asked me last year to produce a document on the business value of growing a community online. le sigh.
Here are some answers to parts of that conversation that stood out for me, since the conversation was pretty much taken over by 4 quite aggressive, serious types in a room of 20 sheepish looking observers (i’d kill to know who on earth these people were!).
1. The future of the web is NOT in paying people for their time.
That’s called work. People interact online because it’s fun, they learn stuff, they laugh, they read and educate themselves about the world, and they can meet new people in ways noone would have thought possible. Oh, and Second Life is not a good example of monetisation on the web (WoW is much better at it).
Paying contributors for their time and effort has proven to be an unsuccessful model (check out some thought about this on theWealth of Networks Chapter 4, an article in the O’Reilly radar, and the founder of wikitravel). A vivid example is why, Yahoo answers won against Google answers.
2. Facebook, mySpace, Second Life and Boingboing aren’t the only things online.
These 4 were the most used examples during the entire conversation ( a gentleman from Nokia mentioned Get Satisfaction which was the only new example) and I do not think they represent the spectrum of web2.0 interactions.
3. Stop thinking the Internet is just a dump.
Not unlike a huge library where people don’t put the books back where they left them, the web is full of information which isn’t relevant to EVERYONE but to SOME. Live with that and leave it alone. Not everything is meant to be organised and controlled. Again think word “fun”.
4. Web2.0 can be stronger than corporations, even the online corporations and if you don’t take control of your company’s voice online, you can be sure someone else will.
I have 2 words for you as worthy examples:HD-DVD and Crapwest. If you don’t want something like this to happen to your company every time you piss people off, take part in the conversation online, the worst thing that can happen is that people will challenge you to offer better services.
So in short web2.0 is immensely useful to businesses if they’re wiling to dig a little deeper than the Facebook “you have a new message” emails. (yes someone did refer to that as an example of web2.0 interactions!)
I won’t even try to address some of the silli comparisons to traditional warlord models that were brought up and I wish I had stayed longer talk through some of these points with people, but I had to dash off to a much lovelier crowd in Shoreditch.
(Any resemblance to any living person is purely accidental and unintentional)
1. You no longer listen to round-table introductions
2. You attend conference because there will be “the usual suspects”
3. You prepare your slides while others present
4. You have reached your quota of AIM buddies
5. Have a ratio of 1:10 following: followers on twitter
6. You come back from an event and conference with business cards you never have time to look at. (They’ll find you online you shrug.)
7. You have stopped blogging (that’s what twitter and jaiku are there for)
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