Art of Survival - Debunking Third World Myths

This entry was inspired by this video of Hans Rosling, talking about world economics but specifically in Africa. He uses data visualization software to really show what he is trying to get across to the audience – without the software I think his talks would not be nearly as informative. The point he is trying to make it that far from being an area of little to no development (which is what a shockingly large amount of people believe it to be) Africa, as a continent has come a long way from the ‘pre-medieval’ state it was in at before the 1900’s. He goes on to criticize lumping the whole continent together as one homogenous unit, but using the software shows that there is massive economic diversity in Africa, with countries in both the upper and lower percentiles of healthcare standards and GDP. He goes on to ‘prove’ that conditions across the continent will keep improving until they are at the place most of Europe/North America is at now. (This trend has already been observed in parts of South America).

So across Africa there is such diversity in conditions that for us to try and design for a whole continent is impossible, and ‘us’ designing for an individual community is inefficient. What the individual areas need is a self-instigated, self-governed system of some kind on behalf of the populace. This is what has already been observed, bringing some countries into the upper levels of ‘development’. With these sorts of systems in place the individual states within Africa are more than capable, and some have been able to, pull themselves out of economic strife.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YpKbO6O3O3M

cosume your ethics

packaging and so_

I agree with 'jo', that designers in the food and other consumption industries could do better. Plastic bags are indeed a huge unnecessary waist in our regular shopping ceremony but compared to the avoidable packaging only a small part of the whole. Why are we still using so many plastic bottles when eco-friendly Tetra Pack could be used instead or why are disposable
batteries still in production when rechargeable ones are nearly as expensive. Why do we find vegetables like coconuts in a plastic packaging. Why do cables or earphones in Currys need a packaging that is more then ten times their size? This are Questions the consumers should ask the big superstores as they ask to avoid plastic bags in order to wash there faces green.

As Yuki affirms, it's not all about introducing paranoia and making costumers face global warming and the end of the world. Jamie Oliver for instance is shaping society showing gracefully how much fun and how quick it is to prepare food. A lot of ready made meals and their packaging would become useless if making your own food would become more popular.; . For the sake of quality we should be aware that pre-made meals, graded products and alimentary that is not in season has to deal with chemicals to make them last longer. For instance: I love Italian Pesto sauce, that contains graded parmigiana cheese, basil, olive oil and nuts; but dislike the ready made ones in the market as they contain chemicals to make the cheese and the nuts last. I would love to buy pre copped basil in olive oil (as most chefs store it in there kitchen) and chop the cheese and nuts my self, but it's impossible to find this simple mixture in the mall.

Designers instead of working on an other microwaveable dish could show the unessential need, the overload of preservatives and especially the over packaging of some products and introduce attractive alternatives as with the upcoming environmental awareness it's been realised that greener products are not necessarily bad for the market.

Futures

The Long Now_

In 01996 a small group of scientists, engineers, designers, and philosophers such as Danny Hillis and Alexander Rose founded the non profit Long Now Foundation.
The Name comes from an essay by Brian Eno where he describes the difficulty to solve long time problems such as global warming because human realities are based on a short now thinking that doesn't go ahead of generations or even only decades.
The Long Now Foundation tries to deal with the kind of problem that no other agency or institution has time and money to deal with as those problems go ahead of the time range they can make profit out of.


The 10 000 Year Clock is one of their projects.This clock is meant do work over next 10 000 years and it measures years instead of seconds and centuries instead of hours.
Their long time goal with this clock is to create a symbol of long time thinking, that can be visited by the coming generations like the Egyptian pyramids or the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The first prototype of the 10 000 Year Clock can be seen in the Science Museum in London. The foundation has just purchased land in Nevada where the 8 foot high final Clock, that ticks every year, bells every century and where thecuckoo comes out every millennium, will be placed.

The Rosetta Project is an other project and it's inspired by the 'rosetta stone' an Ancient Egypt artifact which helbed modern understanding in hieroglyphic writing.

One main issue for the Rosetta project is the rapid loss of languages in the world. The Projects aim is to collect as many languages and documentation on them as possible and store them in as many formats possible. They have already reached 2500 languages and their documentation and worked on side projects such as language labels for Google Earth, and in cooperation with the E.S.A. (European Space Agency), the launch of a the Rosetta disc into space to reach comet 67P/Churyumov- Gerasimenko in the year 2014. Alexander Rose underlines in an interview by Plan*B, the importance of Rosetta because of the fact that we are living in a 'Digital Dark Age', where the formant of files are constantly evolving and past formats aren't readable with new devices. He describes this with the quote: ‘If Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today, his notebooks would not be preserved for the future’.

Referance: Eternaly Yours, Time in Design, Ed van Hinte

On the hedonic treadmill

At a time of global warming and a depletion of the earth's resources, it is only natural to ask why how and why we, the developed world, have contributed to this 'mess'. Our current modes of consumption are not only damaging the planet, they are also not making us any happier. Research is demonstrating that most citizens of the developed world are not more satisfied with life today than they were a few decades ago. During the last two generations, the rate of clinical depression in the United States has more than trippled (Lane 2000). The economist Richard Layard claims that the key factors in determining our satisfaction with life are the circumstances of our childhood, relationships and our outlook on life. Age, looks and intelligence make no difference on our level of happiness (Layard 2005). The key question remains: How is it possible that all the technological advancements and higher living standarts of the last decades have not brought further happiness? According to Oliver James, we are all infected with the 'Affluenza Virus' – we want things we don't need (James 2007). It is also argued that in our economy there is no such thing as 'enough', which leads to the assertion that our society is caught on a so-called 'hedonic treadmill' (Simms & Smith 2008). Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, explained the notion of the 'hedonic treadmill': The consumer society keeps „everyone in perpetual infancy because, if they ever became satisfied with their material lives, they would cease to place the game of expanding desires that keeps the perpetual economy going." (Simms & Smith 2008). Clearly, this culture of disposability is failing to make us any happier.


James, O. (2007) Affluenza. London: Vermilion.

Lane, R.E. (2000) The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Layard, R. (2005) Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. London: Penguin.

Simms, A. & Smith, J. (2008) Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth? London: Constable.

photo: getty images

China - Renewable Energy

China is doing its bit to appear sustainable, they are currently operating 100,000 small Hydro Electrical Power (H.E.P) stations on rivers all over the country. Their greatest sustainable plant, the Three Gorges Dam, the largest Dam in the world and Chinas’ second largest construction, second to the great wall of china is due completion in 2009. It is estimated to generate 40% of Shanghais electricity using H.E.P from a one and a half mile damming system. The fundamental principal of sustainability and the use of renewable energy resources is that they “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations”. Therefore Chinas dam appears a failure.



Dai Qing is a leading Chinese journalist and has investigated in depth the potential for the dam. This potential though, he does not deem positive. He describes the dam as a “political project that exhibits the folly of socialist economics.” Dai believes that because of the nature of the government there is no platform on which one can express objection or protest. Although the Dam has generated 20,000 jobs it will cost $5Billion and for 1million people to move from their homes and water source as their villages will soon be flooded and polluted. Protesters and those who have been known to voice complaints has received jail sentences from 3-7 years. They were convicted of disturbing the ‘Three Gorges Resettlement’ and many of such arrests have been reported to have infringed on The Human Rights Act (2004).

Although China has acknowledged the benefits of using renewable energy their decisions have been made for economic benefits and positive political perception. In 2000 it was estimated that 23.4 billion tons of sewage and industrial waste were strewn into the Yangtze. A large majority of this is a result of the construction of the supposedly environmentally ‘friendly’ dam. It is impossible to compare the benefits of clean energy production against the land, lives, areas of cultural importance, river pollution and wildlife that are being sacrificed for this ‘sustainable energy’ dam. Sustainability should not have to make compromises though, especially, when they are at the expense of social and ecological factors, the factors that are intended to be the priority.

Design for an Environment with Future

But what does this sentence mean? Let’s have a look at ecology and design, the words, and look at their meaning. Ecology means the “The study of the relations of living organisms to their environment” (Ernst Haeckel, 1866), in other words it means how everything is connected with each other. The ecology, the natural science, became the focus of different interests because of known environmental problems. It therefore helps to make political and economical decisions in our society and is no longer a natural science and/or world neutral. How everything is connected with each other… that means everything in this world, every act, every communication, every interaction in the world has a result on the whole system. Nothing exist separate from each other. Ecological design means firstly the realization of results of our own communication and our design performances in this world, and secondly expects you to play an active part in creating our environment, our living space. And do so by making sure to keep it (the environment) working for future generations to come. The task of communication designers is to explore different ways of dealing with the environment and social problems. Advertisings concepts such as from the German cosmetic company “Dove” show new ways of communication. It has to be discussed, which psychological and social effects a draft have. These are made visible on slogans like …, which have dramatic effects on the British economy. The provocation strategy of the 90s tried to be changed with a more human communication, in which also the advertising industry takes a social responsibility. The biggest challenge for designers in the 21st century is the development of products, which have no or only minimal effects on the environment. We should have this in mind design in this way.

style-files.com

pingmag.jp

Times of need are times of change.

 

It is very often that only in times of need is it that changes are made, changes that may have been needed for some time, but it is only when situations get critical that they actually come into action.

 

Food makes up for a massive sector of modern consumerism. A factor that is necessary, as we all need food to live. It is however the way the food is manufacture and distributed that is the major problem. ‘Each year an estimated 6.3 million tones of packaging comes into British homes’ [1] it is this packaging that is raising landfill across the country.  Manufacturers say that the food has to be packaged like this so that the produce is still fresh by the time it gets to the user, and as industrial methods are not local to its consumers this takes some time.

 

There are ways you can reduce the amount of this packaging that ends up in landfill that is by reusing and recycling.  ‘It’s more economical to put empty containers to another use’ [1] than it is to recycle them. By using contains and jars for storage, and then no energy has to be used to give them a new life.

 

Another way of reducing the amount of packaging is to reduce the amount of need, by this I mean move the production closer to the consumer. In wartime when people were in need, thousands of city gardens were turned into kitchen gardens, supplying the household with fresh fruit and vegetables with no need for transport or packaging, and at a much lower cost. If only people now could realize the benefits of growing ones one produce then maybe the mass market would decline. Masses of neglected space around cities could be put back to practical use, and people would realize that they are not as dependent on consumerism as they once thought.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disused city garden. Peckham, London

Photo, my own.

 

(A soldier poses in his trench garden at Ploegsteert Wood in the Ypres Salient, the scene of many horrific battles. Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.)

 

 

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/packaging1.shtml

 

Image:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/253/517090572_18a032e7d1_o.jpg

Future Energy and Design Hypocircy

When talking about sustainable design it is inevitable that the conversation will lead to sustainable energy productions.
Wind farms, tidal and wave harvesters, solar power, geothermic energy and hydroelectricity technologies are being constantly developed.

Japan, the leading manufacturer of solar panel technology has developed spherical solar cells that are designed to absorb light from any angle. This solves the problem that conventional photovoltaic cells have in relying on the position of the sun.
Unless a motorised system that follows the path of the sun is used (which consumes energy) traditional solar panels only function well at certain times of the day. [1]

Architects are going to extraordinary lengths to make their buildings “eco-friendly”
The recently opened Terminal 5 at Heathrow boasts that it recycles rainwater and heat (although that will be little comfort to those that argue that it will encourage more flying which is of course not environmentally friendly). [2]

One of the most impressive buildings being developed that utilises eco-concepts is the as yet unnamed revolving tower designed by architect David Fisher



Each floor will be able to revolve 360° independently and all the energy the tower consumes will be produced by wind turbines between every floor.

In every field of engineering innovative ideas provide great leaps forward for sustainable design.
It’s a little disconcerting to think that countries like Dubai (itself only rich because of oil) can spend millions upon millions of pounds on creating revolving eco-buildings when 3rd world counties would benefit so much more from the innovation and creative thinking being directed towards them.
This imbalance though is seen all across the world. Al Gore won the Nobel Peace prize for his work in combating global warming yet he spends $30,000 a year on energy bills for his own home! [3]
The ethical question is then: If I have the creative means to do something am I obliged to do it?
To avoid the hypocrisy of “do as I say not as I do” we as designers must insure that no matter what we create we have to root the ideas in sustainability, whether that’s the packaging or the end-life of a product or the innovation of something completely new.


[1] http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006018.html
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk
[3] http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/national_world&id=5072659

Charity begins at home

Hell, helping a brother out of a scrape can't be a bad thing. But, like, as I'm sure anybody who's stuck around long enough to read these posts will have considered themselves - are we generally talking altruism or just a way to feel better about ourselves? (Another form of Inconsiderate-Lifestyle Offsetting.) OK, sure, I understand designing for what a designer might consider to be a problem is in a lot of respects different from donating money to Oxfam, but what exactly is it that a designer offers?

I guess there's no use trying to avoid using this pathetic reference (but my apologies anyway): So if you give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, or you teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, the understanding is that you can rightly assume a teaching role on account of your possessing a skill (for example fishing) that 'a man' does not. And would benefit from learning.

Now maybe it's about time for me to put down the keyboard and ask myself, "Is it just me? Am I just easily offended?" but there are very few occasions where I've felt comfortable with the idea of one-way cross-cultural education, initiated by the educators. The thing is, whenever I as much as think about the crises we perceive the human race to be facing, I just can't help but feel patronising. Or preachy, or something. And that's before I've even considered designing an award-winning intervention.

Although, sure, the phrase itself is effective and to the point. (And the practical side can't be much worse than designing for the 10%, right? And dang, there do seem to be a lot of inspiring projects out there.) There's always this perpetuation of the distinction between roles that we/I don't seem to be able to move away from: the in group/out group. Designer/user. (Author/reader, blah blah/blah blah.) And even when people explain that 'we' have a lot to learn from 'them', it's always consciously in contrary to the assumed order, but never far enough away from those ideals.

What's the real difference between any two cultures in these situations? I cringe to type it, but maybe the difference between ourself and our underprivileged friends is purely financial. And from such a conclusion maybe teaching a man to fish, to contribute to his growing economy seems attractive. But from where I'm looking, money's a pretty strange thing. (Financial markets, currency rates - if the consequences of the whole game weren't so potentially damaging, I'd probably take Charlie Brooker's approach and describe it as a fantasy world.) On the flipside, whether a community are 'better off' the way they are (as opposed to having an outsider's assumptions of quality of life, etc., imposed onto them), or should avoid making the same mistakes Western cities and economies have seemingly made in their development, is probably not for an outsider to determine.

I'm so undecided on this it hurts. I watched the TED Talk with Negroponte (the founder of OLPC) and the project made a little more sense afterwards (especially with his emphasis on it being an education project, not a laptop project - although, sure that brings up all sorts of new complexities). I find this whole 'one chill-dude pays, another chill-dude doesn't' set-up interesting. I guess it's kinda like the dole. Either way, with each chill-dude receiving the same product from the deal, if not ground breaking, it's certainly an interesting, if only moderate, variation to conventional models of charity. I wouldn't fully disagree that aesthetically the laptop itself could be deemed patronising, but at least as opposed to being aimed at adults of a different cultural background that the designer's made sweeping assumptions about, it is actually for children. And ultimately, probably the most attractive element of the project is that it's for children from the designers' own country and socio-economic background, too.

Maybe a step towards designing for

Sure, for it's age-group specific design, it's not fully 'inclusive', but I find this approach to design for similar groups in different countries, essentially including the designer's own, pretty interesting.

Michael

Can You Be 10 X The Designer

How can you as a designer do your job and still sleep at night?

Are designers going to have to be justifying themselves forever in the face of the relentless criticism that they design things in such a way that consumers are powerless to resist the entrancing properties of these ‘magical’ like designs?

Or will consumers one day face up to the fact that ‘their focus on consumption is a form of psychological junk food that in the long term makes them unhealthy’ (Professor Costanca, Department of Ecological Economics, University of Vermont) and let designers get on with the necessary job that they have to do.

The critics need to face facts. If tomorrow consumers were to stop consuming for want and were to start consuming for need only, the world’s population would still need a vast and increasing quantity of goods and services.

About half the world’s population lives on about two dollars a day or less. This doesn’t satisfy their most basic of needs. The world’s economic activity is forecast to have to grow by a factor of four over the next 40-50 years simply to move most of the people in the world to a reasonable standard of living.

The population is increasing and is forecast to grow by 50% over the next 40-50 years. Every baby born is, by necessity, another consumer.

Products wear out and break down. New products are designed not just to tempt consumers but because they legitimately do a job more effectively or efficiently.

The world will need more products and it will need new products.

At the same time designers need to face up to reality. The human race has taken over 75% of the Earth’s surface for it’s selfish demands. This is a planet that has to be shared with nature on an equal basis at the very least just to allow the planet’s ecosystems a fighting chance of survival.

In summary the world’s economy has to supply an additional three times more goods to one and half times more people using a third less resources than it does today. Put simply designers need to start designing about ten times better than they do today.

It seems like an impossible task. However, if it is broken down into steps, great improvements may be possible. Take a hypothetical product and start this redesign and reengineering process. (Tefal improved energy efficiency by 68%  with this new kettle design. It may not be attractive but it is effective.)

Source more of the raw materials from environmentally friendly resources (reducing impact by half say) giving an improvement of multiple 2.

Innovatively redesign the product so it does the same or a better job with half the materials and /or processes (giving an improvement of multiple 2).

Make the product run twice as efficiently by installing the best technology available and avoiding wasteful extras (like stand by switches). Tick the multiple 2 box again.

Engineer the product for long-term durability and repairability using the latest engineering analysis techniques doubling the products life span (*2).

Ensure that the product is recyclable so it can be used again (*2).

The hypothetical product is now 32 (2*2*2*2*2) times better designed than when the redesign/reengineering process began.

In fact being a ‘ten times’ better designer can be achieved with as little as roughly 50% improvements at each stage of the design and engineering process. This process of cumulative improvements will ensure that design has a valuable role in a sustainable society and may help make the planet a better place for future generations. 

References.

Geographic, demographic and economic stats are from

Planet Earth - The Future BBC 4  26/11/06 - 10/12/06

Image www.tefal.co.uk

A Modern Fable

The sentence that struck me most as I waded through the text of Rosenberg and Harding’s ‘Histories of the Future’, was…

Of course, these future narratives were also morality tales for the present, but in them the present is materialized through striking kinds of proleptic imagining.

When we look back through our movie archive we can see that this is an accurate observation, even when with every day that passes our possible futures edge closer and closer but seem fewer and fewer.1984 and 2001 were once iconic dates, inspired by visionary books like Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Clarke’s, ‘2001’, A Space Odyssey (and the film versions by Radford and Kubrick respectively) but they now just seem like the dates off of some old calendars discarded in the loft. The concerns of the last century have passed and the moralistic future tales have passed with them.

The nuclear Armageddon of the cold war inspired ‘Planet of the Apes’, the eerie beauty of dystopian ‘Blade Runner’ where man and machine can find true love (while all who can afford it move off the planet), the post modern nihilism of Spielberg’s ‘Artificial Intelligence’ back dropped by a post global warming New York and subsequent ice age, and many more, all now form part of our history of possible futures.

I expect we will see some director’s vision of an artificial urban dystopia where most of the human race has retreated to a network of protective ‘mega-domes’. This will be contrasted with a vision of rural utopia where small bands of hardy but innovative pioneers live in harmony with the land. The interesting thing will be to see just what Hollywood thinks the ‘right’ ending should be.

References

Rosenberg, D. & Harding, S. 2005 Histories of the Future Duke University Press, Durham / London.

Images in order.

‘2001, A Space Odyssey’ http://lookingcloser.org/movie%20reviews/numbertitles/2001.htm

‘Blade Runner,’ www.cyberpunkreview.com/. ../blade-runner/

‘Little House on the Prairie’, http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Little-House-on-the-Prairie-Posters_i275318_.htm

‘Logan’s Run’, http://www.wetcircuit.com/tag/thief-assassin-spy/page/2/

Rather ironically, the positive aspects of urbanization as mentioned in wikipedia is so,"Urbanization is often viewed as a negative trend, but in fact, it occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce expense in commuting and transportation while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition."

This reinforces the statement made by Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of the UN Habitat agency, "People move to the cities not because they will be better off but because they expect to be better off."

The population of people living in slums is increasing rapidly, reaching a predicted high of 6 billion in 2050(2/3 of total human population).

Urbanization offers the illusion of a better life- of mass consumption, of material comfort, of a stable future. Designers are in a dilemma here: whether they should inform people that it is only the illusion of a better life that is offered, or help to make the illusion a reality?

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/5078654.stm

image courtesy of Vladimir Menkov, an author of wikipedia

The transformation of objects into symbols

It is interesting how items can be connected with certain styles of life, and usable as a tool to judge a person before even knowing them. This concept is important to companies when it is coupled with the knowledge that everyone aspires to achieve personal goals and climb the social ladder.

Linking an object to a specific user group by way of advertising is a powerful way of grounding it, and making it desirable too. Of course designers want their products to be valued, and by getting the attention of the right people they can quickly become of interest to others too. Using celebrities to endorse products makes their admirers latch onto logos and objects and see them as something to aim for, as they associate them with success and luxury.

Market research in the same vein, performed and documented by Louis Cheskin noted- “one girl, when she first saw the stylish chantreuse dress commented that ‘the colour makes me want to vomit’. Yet when she was reminded that it was the latest style in colour she finally ended up buying it!”

It is obviously powerful, and something that works backwards too. Creating a product that is perceived as elite because it is priced in a way such that it excludes the majority of people from affording it is a surprisingly underhand tactic companies use to great success, giving their products a certain chic. People relate price to quality, and dream about being able to afford things usually well outside of their price range. This would aim to make people buy the company’s other products because of their reputation.

Urbanization and Slums

Rather ironically, the positive aspects of urbanization as mentioned in wikipedia is so,"Urbanization is often viewed as a negative trend, but in fact, it occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce expense in commuting and transportation while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition."

This reinforces the statement made by Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of the UN Habitat agency, "People move to the cities not because they will be better off but because they expect to be better off."

The population of people living in slums is increasing rapidly, reaching a predicted high of 6 billion in 2050(2/3 of total human population).

Urbanization offers the illusion of a better life- of mass consumption, of material comfort, of a stable future. Designers are in a dilemma here: whether they should inform people that it is only the illusion of a better life that is offered, or help to make the illusion a reality?

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/5078654.stm

Design and Futures, Ethics and Sustainability

Our current opinions of ethics and sustainability seem to be informed by crises- climate change and its physical effects, dwindling resources and the unequal distribution of wealth. Rapid technological advances are often to blame for our current situation-increased pace of life, mass production, mass consumption, planned obsolescence. Since the industrial age, the advancement of technology promised progress in society, leading to better(and more material) lives for people.

It is at a time like this when the anime film "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind"(1984 by Hayao Miyazki) is really relevant. The film is situated in a future where human civilization and the earth's original ecosystem have been destroyed. Human settlements are few and scattered, and the earth is engulfed by a lethally toxic jungle. Life is still technologically advanced but more sustainable and much closely linked to nature. The story is driven by a central character, Nausicaa, who possesses great empathy towards humans, animals and other beings. Her belief in living harmoniously with nature is especially inspiring. Later in the film, past human disputes and battles and through Nausicaa's efforts, do we realise that the lethal toxic jungle is actually the earth's process of creating a new ecosystem.

I was really inspired by the film, with its underlying ecological and humanistic messages. It also helps us to understand how the questioning of issues of ethics and sustainability could inform us of our future actions. Perhaps the future does lie in our technology and innovation, but driven towards a goal of integrating us back into nature(for example scientists are now seeking ways of harvesting energy released from micro-organisms and making it into a long-term, stable reality). The current zeitgeist of our time certainly reinforces this idea. Designers from this point on play a huge role in shaping the future and making it happen. Taking inspiration from nature, design could play the mediating step of helping us change our ideas of material comfort, piloting all of us towards a 'back to basics' future.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausica%C3%A4_of_the_Valley_of_the_Wind
http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v4/n7/full/nrmicro1442.html

FUTURES: the human best friend.

Nobody thought that the first American astronaut in the space would be a monkey, at that time around the 60’s, even nobody thought that any earth creature would be able to go there. It was a dream, a distant future, humans were scared in front of a new event, the space race, completely unknown and without any control about it.
They decided to send an “animal”, without rights, without power of decision, to substitute them in the risks, but not in the glory.
How far can go humans using our lovely neighbours in using them for testing new technologies?, are they the main characters of the future?, is the human race scary about its own capability to progress?.
The interaction designer Anab Jain, has created a project about a near future, from now to 2012, where is a society that demands new needs and as a consequence of this, new jobs.
After a huge research, included some collaborations with the institute of the future Palo Alto, she have created some characters which represents the evolution of the current trends in the human work places, as the rising self employed workers who pass 75% of the time in front of a computer, or the use of new technologies to help the growth of the ambition of some entrepreneurs aspirants.
One of her characters is a dog called “Luka”, whose owner is a hacker, nomadic city worker, the classic profile of a men behind the shadow, who use “Luka” to design a strategy to sell himself and his future business.
He and his partner, a pet surgeon, implant a Wi-Fi embodied in a microchip which is made by some experimental materials, as ceramic nanoparticles included in nanotechnologies which are currently carefully tested by scientifics, and are potentially dangerous.
Basically the dog works as a Podcast, that store the information that can be shared in every moment in every place in the neighbourhood.
Jain, through her research and his collaborators is trying to tell us something about human nature and its relation with the future through the metaphor of “Luka”, why is human capable of using his called “best friend”, in using it to design their personal targets, profits and purposes?, what about the dog?.
Humans feel anxiety when they think in the future, they don’t think clear and become collapsed, sometimes without planning properly and with hurry, so then arrive the mistakes, no sustainable systems , inequality, poverty, war.


-http://www.littlebrinkland.com
- The Visions of the future BBC doc. DVD (goldsmiths dvd collection)

Lets play God

Some scientists have been receiving a lot of tempting propositions from different places to get the funding to realise one ambitious project: create a new form of life. They want to become creators in a new category. At the moment it would consist in creating bacterias but in the future why wouldn't it be put on a larger scale! The aim at the moment is more to find a way to increase our health. Some bacteria are good for the organism; other can lower pollution or even kill annoying parasites. But there are also some that are hazardous to us.
Imagine that one scientist created a new form of life that has the power of thought. If we take the example of humans then it is easy to believe that this new specie would start worshiping its creator. But compared to us and our various beliefs in different Gods, this new specie would actually have the proof that their creator actually exists, that it is a physical organism. There would be no doubt in that belief.
Why would only one group of scientist be worshiped? Maybe others will want to create new life to be worshiped as well. The earth could soon be infested with new forms of life that have strong beliefs. And this could create new conflicts. And should a new form of life be considered as an animal or maybe a new category will have to be invented to make the distinction between living forms that are coming from the unknown and the ones that can be exactly spotted in the story of evolution. A new being that has no doubt about his past, one that understands why he is here, why he was created. One that has no existential issues. Or maybe it could be the opposite, the whole existence of that new being would be so clear that it could bring some questions about the aim of their life.
And design has an important role in this prospect. How would the interaction between natural and laboratory creatures work is something that designers should think about. Control this outcome, control their life.

http://www.bioethics.net/articles.php?viewCat=2&articleId=27

Is over 50% of the damage done to the o-zone layer due to one man?

Thomas Midgley, Jr. (May 18, 1889 – November 2, 1944), was an American mechanical engineer turned chemist. He developed both the tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) additive to gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). By putting lead into the petrol, the engine would run a lot quieter and more powerfully but was ultimately very damaging to the ozone layer, while CFCs having a number of applications are most commonly associated with the use in fridges and asthma inhalers, and although mostly phased out, are still used today in some heat pumps. The use of this chemical compound has been argued to be one of the largest contributors to global warming.

Thomas Midgley, Jr. died at the age of 55 without knowing what kind of effect his contributions made on the environment; probably thinking that he had made the earth a better place, with a higher standard of living. One historian remarked that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history."

It is widely accepted that if we do not dramatically lower our annual carbon footprint, or come up with another solution within 8 years, the earth will be uninhabitable within 50. If Thomas Midgley, Jr. or anyone else had not had these “breakthroughs”, we would have perhaps another 8 years to decide what to do and this could very well be the difference between our extinction and our survival.

Although coming from an age when environmental awareness was not so keen, it is clear that it is very difficult to foresee the repercussion of our inventions. So as designers, do we have some kind of moral duty to design for ecology? and what kind of impact will our work have on the future?


McNeill, J.R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2001) New York: Norton, xxvi, 421 pp

Bryson, B., A Short History of Nearly Everything. (2003) Broadway Books, USA

FUTURE- Designing for the future

FUTURES

Designing for the future

The future human settlements in Western Culture have been argued for almost two decades on how do they can sustain themselves for a less environmental impact. In other words, in which ways can old and new cities become greener.

Some facts lie on the excess of waste on household electricity, water waste and transport (car usage), thus becoming one of the major concerns of governs to be addressed in the planned for the global future’s environmental targets. There are staggering facts claiming that almost a 30% of the C02 emissions come form cites lighting and households energy waste. It seems that there is a lot effort to have to be put into it to use it as via to educate citizens and public in general.

Thus some projects for new eco-cities, Dongtan in China, have the purpose to be designed completely sustainable, not just environmentally, but also socially, economically and culturally. These almost new projects that are coming in different ways are over all an injection to find models for new and future human settlement.

The models for new cities have a lot to do in the way they are designed for the purpose of sustainment. A lot of interest is placed in architecture and sustainable materials, strategies for a better human performance, including the way people consume, move and relate to each other, and ultimately how sustainment has to become a conscious intention for one’s life project on the overall human kind.

Artificial Natural

We are constantly searching for new ways to enhance the current state of our lives. We take our disadvantages as humans only capable of so much physically, and use our surroundings and skills to help create new systems that are capable of doing what we are not. We do anything and everything we can to suit our needs. We use design to better our lives rather than live and adapt to the circumstances afflicting us.
For example, prosthetic limbs. We have the ability to design fully functional limbs. A need for a replacement limb seems a situation that no one would want to be in, therefore the use of design to help aid this circumstance appears quite useful. Although, there would be no need for such designs if we were physically capable of regeneration. Regeneration is the restoration or new growth by an organism of organs, tissues, etc., that have been lost, removed, or injured.

Humans are not evolved enough to restore limbs, although, there seems to be indicators that given enough time to evolve and have the need for this ability long enough it could be possible. From a very young age if the just the tips of your fingers are removed by any reason they will completely restore themselves, but this only occurs when the cells are very new and constantly regenerating themselves. Also, more commonly known is the ability of the human liver to fully restore any lost tissue. Another anatomical part of the human body is the rib. Regeneration is something we clearly can not do to the fullest extent as other biological beings. A starfish is capable of restoring its entire body off of just one lost ray, therefore if a human was capable of this an entire person would grow and develop off of a lost limb. One star fish can generate more than one starfish just from one original source. To us this seems impossible, but how far can evolution go naturally? You see design clearly helps us in our immediate state of need but also does it hinder our natural process to full adapt?

Artificial natural: deforestation and re-forestation, (the human paradox).

The human being have been looking to improve their quality of life and commodities through destroying their surrounded natural ecosystems, and it has been even more improved during the last century and in the current one. The sea, the rivers and forests have been exploded until their exhaustion, to satisfy the “progress” needs or requirements. We didn’t planned or researching the consequences of the impact of our presence enough before we decided to intervene into those natural environments and the consequences have been devastating.
Half of the earth surface was covered by forests 10.000 years ago, but each week disappear a forest surface equivalent to a 320.000 football fields because the human action.
Those forests as the other ecosystems, are very rich as a field to research in several fields of knowledge, to learn about nature, to observe and analyze about the different animal species and their peculiarities, about the vegetation, which means a potential field to find inspiration to improve our own lives, to discover new remedies for our diseases and new materials to be used in designing new technologies, which at the end are going to improve our lives through new commodities.
But looks like humans are learning about their mistakes and they are creating “green lungs” or big green spaces to make up for the damage they created when they decided to start cultivating the land and building huge cities and industrial areas.
There is in Mexico D.F, one of the most populated cities in the world with around 25 million citizen and which has less than 1.8 metres of green space per inhabitant, a natural reserve called Xochimilco Park, which through the building of floating gardens called “chinampas” has been designed to repair the water resources and adequate storm water drainage and absorption, which was seriously damaged since the deforestation and over exploitation of the soil during the last century which with the pollution have degraded severely the environment. This park has as well a tree nursery that produces 30 million trees every year that are planed to place throughout the city.
This project is an example of an artificial ecosystem created by humans to make up for their power of destruction. This project makes the environment artificially more sustainable and it should be a reference to make humans reflect about a better planning of the cities before build them, and about the consequences of destroying the environment that at the end introduce humans in a vice circle in which our artificial technology supplied by our questionable “ethical progress” repairs the damage we did before, but may be one day can be too late.

Resources

- Design and Landscape for people, new approaches to renewal.
- http://www.cienciapopular.com/n/Ecologia/Deforestacion_Mundial/Deforestacion_Mundial.php

Futures

Can we design for the future? ...well that depends.

In today’s world we are constantly planning for the future. Technology and design are changing and improving every single day. So its obvious that designing for the future can indeed be done, no questions asked. However, saying that a design will be effective and influential in the next few years might not be true. It is quite a paradox really. We spend all this time designing the newest and most improved products that are considered “the future”, only to find ourselves designing “the future” three or five years after the previous thing we considered to be “the future” product.

A good example of a product that is constantly improving and being redesigned would be video game systems. Despite not having any real impact or significance in our daily lives, video games are a forever-changing product with little to no design sustainability. Computers, on the other hand, hold a much greater purpose, because at this point in time our lives seem to revolve around them. They are our source for organization and infinite information. However, again, regardless that their purpose is must greater than video games, they too are constantly changing, much quicker actually. It seems like every month there is a new computer out there that’s faster, more powerful, more advanced, has more memory, etc. The same idea can be applied to cars, mp3 players, television sets, DVD players, and so on.

Basically what I want to say is that yes we can design for the future. However, I think that it is important to determine what we consider to be the future. I mean a minute from now is the future, and so is 50 years from now. It is obvious we are designing for the future, but when designing is complete, we find ourselves redesigning the same thing we just designed for “the future” all over again. Really it is just a vicious circle of designing and redesigning until perfection is reached…which for the most part may never be reached. Ultimately, it just boils down to sustainability. If the world were to end tomorrow, then everything we have designed to this point has proven itself sustainable… but if the world continues one for the next million years then all those designs are unsustainable. 

Climate Change in Advertising

The pervasive use of the topics of climate change and sustainability in advertising means people are constantly confronted by these problems. However, statistics show that such marketing strategies are not as clever as they are intended to be. Most consumers don’t take product and image campaigns with environmental themes seriously, especially when companies emphasize their sustainability aims.

One example is the German railway system. They sell an Environmental BahnCard along with their regular BahnCard. The only difference with the Environmental BahnCard, other than its green landscape, is the digital points scheme used with the German rail website to support environmental projects. A TV advertisement for the card presents a family planning to travel, where the teenage girl is upset that her father wants to take the train instead of the car. A German singer joins them in the train’s cabin and so the girl asks her father if she too can have an Environmental BahnCard. It is not realistic that a teenager changes her opinion about the environment just because a famous singer is taking the train.

According to the Society of the German Language the German word of the year 2007 was ‘climatic catastrophe‘.[1] Though many companies try to raise public awareness of the environment and their products by using such strategies, it is often difficult to convey the right values and there is the risk that they appear to be ‘greenwashing‘ their image.

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wort_des_Jahres

Art of Survival- What if slum cities were green?

Even though they are not as affluent as New York City or London, third world cities are constantly growing. As these cities are growing, they must not make the same mistake that our current super cities are making. There is no connection between the body and the space around us. In order to increase health within our environment, we must remember that we are not machines. There are an incredible amount of people who are sick with malaria, respiratory illness, and other hygienic sicknesses. Due to this, we must create an environment where recovery will be enhanced and treatment be at maximum effectiveness. In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis defines that a large population of people are living in slums and a lot of the statistic under counts the amount of people that are living in slums. If we look at the health conditions of current cities, skies are full of smog, street are crowded with little view of greenery. Current slums are worst then this, if we do not change during the evolution of slums into cities. There will be a great and dire harm to our human bodies.

Future- what about our health?

Future

As the new global green movement continues. People are finally realizing that our earth is dying. As we are biological creatures, there is an inevitable connection between us and the earth. I believe that as the world becomes more eco friendly we will find a new connection between the world and our bodies. By doing so, we will be more healthy and a lot more happier. In an article, “Healing Our Bodies Through Healing the Earth”, Stacy Simone states,

“ According to British research-scientist James Lovelock's Gaia Theory (many aspects of which have now become accepted by the mainstream), the earth is a self-regulating superorganism of which we humans are a part, with its different parts working together as an interconnected whole.”

We are a part of the entire system that is earth and to pull ourselves away only enhances the egotism that is human beings. However, there is a large and great movement that is happening at the moment. Other then the green movement, there are artists and architects that are understanding the importance of health in architecture. One person would be Shusaku Arakawa. He created in New York the “Architectural Body Research Foundation”. Along with his partner Madeline Gins, they created the Reversible Destiny Houses. In this house, the complete interior of the building is designed so that the user would benefit their bodies just by being in the space.

Simone, Stacy. Healing Our Bodies Through Healing the Earth.“http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/605237/healing_our_bodies_through_healing.html” Feb 19, 2008. Associated Content, Inc.

Open Source and Sustainability

Many open source networks have flourished on the internet and in the field of software. Open source is an interesting way to explore changing the design process to make outcomes more sustainable, allowing for collaborations of developers that would perhaps not normally work together on the same project. The free nature of the software means anyone from business people to hobbyists can develop a program or technology. Open source allows for (but does not restrict to) non commercially driven projects which could create products more focused on real user need. The closed nature of the development of the vast majority of products means that only a small number of people influence how they are developed over time. When a product is open source its development can evolve in a more natural way, and also allows individuals to customise it to suit their own needs. In this way the user can have a better connection to the product, making it more emotionally durable and therefore more sustainable.

One of the most controversial areas of the open source knowledge debate is in medicine and pharmaceuticals. This is an extreme case where strict intellectual property rights can make drugs too expensive and slow research progression unnecessarily, ultimately costing lives. This is one example where perhaps the loosening of intellectual property law would be effective.

Futures

Scientists now understand the mechanism of ageing. They managed to understand why human beings get old. It is basicaly due to the divisons of the cells. The aim now is to be able to manipulate this mechanism. And this could lead to things such as the cure for cancer and the biological immortality. In deed some scientists strongly believe that in the next 20 to 50 years there will be a treatment available to stop ageing. This would mean that you could live forever. But many issues arise when thinking about this possible future. If we all become death proof we will then have to stop making babies in order to cope with overpopulation. China showed the entire world with their one child policy introduced in 1979 that trying to control populations growth raises huge concerns about human rights. Coming back to our possible never ending life, some new policies will have to be made to control this new issue. And these policies will certainly not please the populations of our societies.
The abandon of natural reproduction. Nature gave us the ability to reproduce ourselves in order to continue our posterity, and we could dare to stop that wheel of evolution. A rebellion against nature like this one would certainly have an impact on humanity and its beliefs.
So suicide, accidents and murders will be the only ways to die. The numbers may rise dramaticaly if immortality was to happen. Because Man is scared of the unknown, he tries to find solutions to it for Him to feel better and less anxious. In this case Man is scared of death and rather than trying to find whats after death (which is more of a metaphysical subject at the moment) he prefers to eradicate this process. No more death, no more questions to have about it. No more anxiety on this subject. Natural death will be seen as an old disease from the past.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/13/tech/main673726.

The Art Of Survival

Although slums are commonly associated with developing countries, Crisis recently estimated there are up to 150,000 homeless people in London alone. Many of this number are squatters who have occupied spaces they do not own, either legally or illegally.

Hearing the word ‘homeless’ instantly provokes negative connotations, however many choose squatting over a conventional lifestyle because of the freedom it can add to their creativity or everyday life. Although there are obvious financial benefits to not having to pay rent, this also allows almost all of a squatter’s activities to be non commercial. Because of this many artist and designers have been attracted to squatting. Numerous autonomous creative collectives have sprung up in London, many of which are (or were) based in Peckham. One such collective is “DA!”. Standing for direct action, the group has occupied several high profile buildings (including the ex-Iraqi Embassy) and transformed them into temporary studios and exhibition spaces.

Aside from the work created or exhibited in these spaces, each separate collective represents the design of an unconventional way of living, where people are allowed much more time to divide as they see fit. Use of fossil fuels and production of CO₂ means that our current lifestyle is not sustainable and needs adjustment. Although undoubtedly things can be learned from ‘squatter cities’ in developing countries, we can also look to new cultures being developed within our own city to inform change to our culture.

http://www.crisis.org.uk/page.builder/howmany-hmless-lon.html

http://www.fexia.com/DASITE/index.html

http://www.timeout.com/london/art/features/2885.html

The Information society

Where we situate our morels depends on what information we have come in contact with. Morals are taught to us at a young age, by any direct authority around us for example your parents or teachers. However, if these people teach you things which are ‘wrong,’ how would you ever know about it?

Aside from people around you there is always the in-direct authority, for example the government or media. So is the government’s stance where we should all position ourselves morally? The government, whose motives are driven by votes and commerce.

So the question remains, how should we define our ethics? In the modern world we need not be subject to only the beliefs of the people around us. The internet has created both a library and community of the world. Anything you wish to know about can be found out.

Now, learning can take place from a multiple of sources at the same time and from people who are strangers. This method though, tends to overwhelm the user with information. For example if you type ‘climate change’ into Google you get back 36, 200, 000 links and then each of those pages themselves, may have a minimum of three to four hyper-links. Leaving you with 108, 600, 000 options for information. So how is any human supposed to navigate this mass of information?

The answer is that people nowadays have become much better filterers and processors of information. However this has created a new problem, in that we get so involved in ‘finding the right information’ and ‘sifting through the junk’ that we no longer have time to sit and contemplate the information once found; we have become mechanized in a sense, changing our behavior to mimic technology.

Therefore in this world of information how does anybody get the message across?