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1、In the BubbleDesigning in a Complex WorldBy Kohn ThackaraContents and ExtractsTable of Contents IntroductionChapter 1 LightnessChapter 2 SpeedChapter 3 MobilityChapter 4 PlaceChapter 5 SpaceChapter 6 ConvivialityChapter 7 LearningChapter 8 LiteracyChapter 9 SmartnessChapter 10 FlowNotesWhat To Read
2、NextTen Books To Read NextA Book A Week For A YearBibliography ExtractsTHE 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 s
3、tate 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. Were filling up the world with amazing devices and systemson top of the natural and human ones that were already hereonly to discover that th
4、ese complex systems seem to be out of control: too complex to understand, let alone to shape, or redirect.Things may seem out of controlbut 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
5、is truebut 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 behin
6、d 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 f
7、ace us today.My premise is simply stated: If we can design our way into difficulty, we can design our way out. “Everyone designs,” wrote scientist Herb Simon, “who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations, into preferred ones.”ii For Victor Papanek, too, “design is basic to al
8、l human activitiesthe placing and patterning of any act towards a desired goal constitutes a design process.”iii Designing is what human beings do.Two questions follow this understanding of design. First, where do we want to be? What exactly are the “preferred situations” or “desired goals” that Sim
9、on and Papanek talk about? Second, how do we get there? What courses of action will take us from here, to there?One of the things that drove me to write In The Bubble was boredom with the schlock of the new. Many of the “preferred situations” that Simon talked about already existbut in a different a
10、nd often unexpected context. One of the things you can do next Monday morning, after reading this book, is walk out of your door and take a look around. I am confident you will be surprised by the variety of social innovation taking place in your environment. I have been.That said, addressing the qu
11、estion “Where do we want to be?” brings us up against an innovation dilemma. Weve built a technology-focused society that is remarkable on means, but hazy about ends. Its no longer clear to which question all this stufftechis an answer, or what value it adds to our lives. But many people I meet assu
12、me that being innovative means “add technology to it.” Technology has become a powerful, self-replicating system that is accustomed to respect and receives the lions share of research funding. In NASDAQ, tech even has its own stock exchange.I do not suggest that we have fallen out of love with techn
13、ology, more that we are regaining appreciation and respect for what people can do that tech cant. Throughout the modern age we have subordinated the interests of people to those of technology, an approach that has led to the unthinking destruction of traditional cultures and the undermining of forms
14、 of life that we judged, once, to be backward. The victims of this approach to modernization have not just been hapless people in rain forests. “Getting people to adapt” to new technology has affected us all. We believed that the assembly line and standardization would make the world a better place,
15、 yet along with efficiency came a dehumanization of work. We act no less as slaves to the machine today when we lambaste teachers as “obstacles to progress” when they do not embrace the latest technological fix for education.ivThe introduction of a new mass technologytelegraph, railway, electrificat
16、ion, radio, telephone, television, automobiles, air travelhas always been accompanied by a spectacular package of promises. A certain navet is excusable for the inventors of those early technologies: They had no way of knowing about the unforeseen consequences of their innovations. Today, we dont ha
17、ve that alibi. We know that new technologies have unexpected consequences.v Being skeptical about technology does not mean rejecting it. For one thing, we dont have an either/or choice: Terra firma, and terabits, are both here to stay. Broadband, smart materials, wearables, pervasive computing, conn
18、ected appliances, and other stuff we dont know about yet will continue to transform the ways we live. The question is, how?Means and ends have lived apart too long in discussions of innovation. Understanding why things changeand reflecting on how they should changeare not separate issues. We need to
19、 reframe issues of technology and innovation in ways that make it easier for nonspecialists to engage in meaningful dialogueas things happen.We cannot stop tech, and theres no reason why we should. Its useful. But we can change the innovation agenda and insist that people come before tech. It will b
20、e an ongoing struggle, of course. From nineteenth-century mill owners to twentieth-century mers, businesspeople have looked for ways to remove people from production, using technology and automation to do so. A lot of organizations will continue on this path, but theyre behind the times.A transition
21、 is already under way from innovation driven by science fiction to innovation inspired by social fiction.Its not that were dumb. On the contrary, many millions of people have exerted great intelligence and creativity in building the modern world. Its more that were being swept into unknown and dange
22、rous waters by accelerating economic growth. On just one single day of the days I have spent writing this book, as much world trade was carried out as in the whole of 1949; as much scientific research was published as in the whole of 1960; as many telephone calls were made as in all of 1983; as many
23、 e-mails were sent as in 1990.vi Our natural, human, and industrial systems, which evolve slowly, are struggling to adapt. Laws and institutions that we might expect to regulate these flows have not been able to keep up.A good example is what is inaccurately described as mindless sprawl in our physi
24、cal environment. We deplore the relentless spread of low-density suburbs over millions of acres of formerly virgin land. We worry about its environmental impact, about the obesity in people that it fosters, and about the other social problems that come in its wake. But nobody seems to have designed
25、urban sprawl, it just happensor so it appears. On closer inspection, however, urban sprawl is not mindless at all. There is nothing inevitable about its development. Sprawl is the result of zoning laws designed by legislators, low-density buildings designed by developers, marketing strategies design
26、ed by ad agencies, tax breaks designed by economists, credit lines designed by banks, geomatics designed by retailers, data-mining software designed by hamburger chains, and automobiles designed by car designers. The interactions between all these systems and human behavior are complicated and hard
27、to understandbut the policies themselves are not the result of chance. “Out of control” is an ideology, not a fact.In a less-stuff-more-people world, we still need systems, platforms, and services that enable people to interact more effectively and enjoyably.vii These platforms and infrastructures w
28、ill require some technology and a lot of design. Some services will help us share the load of everyday activities: washing clothes on the roof of apartment blocks, looking after children, communal kitchens and gardens, communal workshops for maintenance activities, tool and equipment sharing, networ
29、ks and clubs for health care and prevention. The most important potential impact of wireless communications, for example, will be on the resource ecologies of cities. Connecting people, resources, and places to each other in new combinations, on a real-time basis, delivers demand-responsive services
30、 that, when combined with location awareness and dynamic resource allocation, have the potential to reduce drastically the amount of hardwarefrom gadgets to buildingsthat we need to function effectively. Most of us are potentially both users and suppliers of resources. The principle of use, not own
31、can apply to all kinds of hardware: buildings, roads, vehicles, officesand above all, people. For more or less anything heavy and fixed, we dont have to own them just know how and where to find them.There are many things wrong with design in our world, but designers, as a group of people, are not th
32、e problem. Thirty years ago, in Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek observed that “there are professions more harmful than industrial designbut only a few.”viii This kind of blaming and shaming is counterproductive and unjustified. The world contains its share of selfish and incurious designer
33、s, of course. But no designer that I ever met set out to wreck the planet, force us to eat fast food, or make life miserable. Our dilemma is that small design actions can have big effectsoften unexpectedlyand designers have only recently been told, with the rest of us, how incredibly sensitive we ne
34、ed to be to the possible consequences of any design steps we take.Another reason not to blame designers for our ills is that many of them are working hard, right now, to fix them. They are designing new services and systems that are radically less environmentally damaging, and more socially responsi
35、ble, than the ones we have now. This book contains many examples of their often-inspiring work. But the challenges and opportunities that face us will not be solved by designers acting on our behalf. On the contrary: As we suffuse the world with complex technical systemson top of the natural and soc
36、ial systems already hereold-style top-down, outside-in design simply wont work. The days of the celebrity solo designer are over. Complex systems are shaped by all the people who use them, and in this new era of collaborative innovation, designers are having to evolve from being the individual autho
37、rs of objects, or buildings, to being the facilitators of change among large groups of people.Sensitivity to context, to relationships, and to consequences are key aspects of the transition from mindless development to design mindfulness.ix At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief that ethics and r
38、esponsibility can inform design decisions without constraining the social and technical innovation we all need to do. Design mindfulness involves a determination to think about the consequences of design actions before we take them and pay close attention to the natural, industrial, and cultural sys
39、tems that are the context of our design actions; consider material and energy flows in all the systems we design;give priority to human agency and not treat humans as a “factor” in some bigger picture;deliver value to peoplenot deliver people to systems; treat “content” as something you do, not some
40、thing are sold; treat place, time, and cultural difference as positive values, not as obstacles; focus on services, not on things, and refrain from flooding the world with pointless devices .Our journey is not an easy one. We need to think, connect, act, and start processes with sensitivity We need
41、to foster new relationships outside our usual stomping grounds. We have to learn new ways to collaborate and do projects. We have to enhance the ability of all citizens to engage in meaningful dialogue about their environment and context and foster new relationships between the people who make thing
42、s and the people who use them. The “we” here is important. In a world of complex systems and constant change, we are all, unavoidably, “in the bubble.” The challenge is to be both in the bubble and above it, at the same timeto be as sensitive to the big picture, and the destination we are headed for
43、, as we are to the smallest details of the here and the now.NotesIntroduction1. Statistic quoted in Design Council, Annual Review 2002 (London: Design Council, 2002), 19.2. Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), chap. 1.iii. Victor Papanek, Design for the Real Wo
44、rld: Human Ecology and Social Change (New York: Random House, 1972), 23. iv. Daniel Cohen, Our Modern Times: The New Nature of Capitalism in the Information Age (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).v. During the early years of the twentieth century, several thousand people were developing application
45、s of the internal-combustion engine, often unique ones. Most of the endeavors went under, and a decade later only a handful survived. But one of these applications, the automobile, became an icon of modernity and a driver of transformation in our cities and lives. Along the way the car has enabled s
46、prawl, disrupted communities, polluted the air, and killed a lot of peopleand it continues to do so. But its inventors could not have known this would happen.vi. Statistics taken from South African website CellularOnline(http:/www.mobileoffice.co.za/stats/stats-main.htm).13. The English writer Charl
47、es Leadbeater has written extensively about innovation as platform building. See, for example, Charles Leadbeater, Personalisation through Participation (London: Demos, 2004).viii. Papanek, Design for the Real World, 14. 15. Alain Findeli, “Rethinking Design Education for the 21st Century: Theoretic
48、al, Methodological, and Ethical Discussion,” Design Issues 17, no. 1, 57.LITERACY (extract 1,900 words)A few years ago I met a woman in Bombay who was completing her Ph.D. in social anthropology. She had just returned from a field trip to Rajasthan, where she had spent time with a group of traveling
49、 storytellers. This particular group went from village to village, unannounced, and would simply start a performance in the village square. Although each story would have a familiar plotthe storytelling tradition dates back thousands of yearseach event would be unique. Prompted by the storytellers, who held up pictorial symbols on sticks, villagers would
