Telecommunications, media, and computation converge. What makes
the convergence possible and necessary is a combination of
factors united in the necessity to reach efficiency appropriate
to human practical experiences at the global scale of existence
and work. It is within this broad dynamics and inner dynamics
that design ascertains itself as a force for change from the
civilization of literacy to the civilization of many, sometimes
contradictory, literacies. A shirt used to be mere clothing; the
T-shirt became, in view of many concurrent forces, a new icon, a
sui generis medium of communication. The commercial aspect is
obvious. For example, each university of certain renown has
licensing arrangements with some manufacturer who advertises the
name on the walking billboards of chests, backs, and bellies. The
T-shirt effectively replaces wordy press statements and becomes
an instance of live news. Before Operation Desert Storm got into
full swing, the T-shirt already signaled love for the troops or,
alternatively, anti-war sentiment. Magic Johnson's admission that
he had tested HIV positive was followed, less than two days
later, by the "We still love you" T- shirts in Los Angeles.
The quasi-instantaneous annotation of events is in keeping with
the fast change of attitudes and expectations. Institutions have
inertia; they cannot keep up with the rhythm of the times. The
news, formed and conveyed outside the institution of media,
reads as a manifesto of immediacy, but also as a testimony to
ephemerality. We actually lose our shirts on the immediate, not
on the permanent. Design projects this sense of immediacy and
ephemerality not only through T-shirts or the Internet. The
house, clothes, cars, the Walkman, everything is part of this
cycle. Is design the cause of this, or is it something else,
expressed through design, or to which designers become
accomplice? The shorter fashion cycles, the permanent renewal of
design forms, the 30-second drama or comedy of
advertisement-more appropriate to the rhythms of existence than
never-ending soap-operas-the new VLSI board, the craze for
designer non-alcoholic beer or low-fat pork-all testify to a
renewal speed met by what seems an inexhaustible appetite on the
side of our current commercial democracy. The refresh rate of
images on our TV sets and computer monitors, predicated by the
intrinsic characteristics of technology and human biology, is
probably the extreme at which cycles of change can settle.
To take all this with enthusiasm or trepidation, without
understanding why and how it happens, would contradict the basic
assumption pursued in this book. The pragmatic context of high
efficiency is also one of generalized democracy, extended from
production to consumption. The ubiquitous engine driving the
process is the possibility, indeed necessity, of human
emancipation from all possible constraints. The experience of
design acknowledges that emancipation from constraints does not
ultimately result in some kind of anarchic paradise. The right to
partake in what human experiences generate often takes the form
of taste that is equalized and rendered uniform, and of
ever-expanding choices that ultimately turn out be mediocre.
As a reaction to the implicit system of values of literacy,
related to limited choices, illiterate design expression does
not impose upon the user in design, but involves the user in
choices to be made. In this way, design becomes an indicator of
the state of public intelligence, taste, and interest. It also
points to a new condition of values. The indicator might not
always show a pretty picture of who we are, and what our
priorities are. The honest interpretation of such an indicator
can open avenues to understanding why the Walkman-which seems to
seduce people by an ideal of insulation from others-has the
success it has, why some fashion designs catch on and others
don't, why some car models find acceptance, why movies on
significant themes fail, and why, on a more general level,
quality does not necessarily improve under circumstances of
expectations in continuous expansion. New thresholds are set by
each new design attempt. The wearable computer is yet another
gadget in the open- ended development that unites evolution and
revolution.
The need to achieve high levels of efficiency corresponding to
the current human scale is probably the aspect most ignored.
Efficiency, pre-programmed through design, confirms that human
involvement is expensive (do-it-yourself dominates at all levels
of design), and service more profitable than manufacturing in
developed countries. None of these solutions can be taken
lightheartedly. After all, design bridges to the future, and to
bridge to a world of depleted resources, destroyed ecology, and a
mediocre human condition is not necessarily a good reason for
optimism. The goal of reducing human involvement, especially
when the human is forced into exhausting and dangerous
experiences, is very attractive, but also misleading. To reduce
human involvement, energies different from those of an
individual involved in experiences of self-constitution as a
user need to be provided. Faced with the challenge posed by the
dualistic choice expectations vs. resources, designers often fail
to free themselves from the literate ideology of dominating
nature. Fortunately, design based on co-evolution with nature is
gaining momentum. So is the design of materials endowed with
characteristics usually associated with human intelligence.
The inherent opposition between means and goals explains the
dynamics of design in our time. Extremely efficient methods of
communication lead to information saturation. New methods for
designing result in an apparent overabundance of artifacts and
other products of design. It seems that the driving force is the
possibility to practically meet individual expectations at
levels of productivity higher than those of literacy-based mass
production, and at costs well below those of mass production. The
challenge-how to maintain quality and integrity-is real and
involves more than professional standards. Market-specific
processes, probably well reflected in the notion of profit,
affect design decisions to the extent that often human practical
experiences in the market result in under-designing or
over-designing negotiated items. Changing expectations, as a
consequence of rapidly changing contexts of human experiences,
affect the design cycle even more than the production cycle. The
ability to meet such changes by a built-in design variability
is, however, not only a test of design, but also of its implicit
economic equation.
Enormous segments of the world population are addressed by
design. This fact gives the design experience, taken in its
entirety, a new social dimension. Against the background of the
opportunity to fine-tune designs to each individual without the
need to build on expected literacy, the responsibility of such
an activity is probably unprecedented. Whether designers are
aware of it, and able to work within the boundaries of such an
experience, is a different question.