Part 35 (1/2)

The need to achieve high levels of efficiency corresponding to the current hunored

Efficiency, pre-progran, confirms that human involvement is expensive (do-it-yourself don), and servicein 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 ood reason for opti human involve and dangerous experiences, is very attractive, but also ies 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 the nature Fortunately, design based on co-evolution with nature is gaining n of materials endoith characteristics usually associated with huence

The inherent opposition between n in our time Extremely efficient methods of communication lead to infor result in an apparent overabundance of artifacts and other products of design It see force is the possibility to practically her than those of literacy-based mass production, and at costs well below those of e-how to rity-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 huning or over-designing negotiated iteing contexts of hun cycle even es by a built-in design variability is, however, not only a test of design, but also of its in This fact gives the design experience, taken in its entirety, a new social diround 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 ithin the boundaries of such an experience, is a different question

The new designer

Designsfrom human practical experiences and possibilities (Gibson defined them as affordances) in nature and society They ee; and they need to interface between the given and the desired or the expected The language of design has an implicit set of anticipations and a projected endurance

Aesthetic structuring, culturally rooted and technologically supported, affects the efficiency of designed iteainst this implicit set of anticipations It translates froes of hun, and fron in a product, event,to consider the process of designing from as many perspectives as possible From the thumbnail sketch to thethe other, n resembles a natural selection process: one solution eliminates the other, and so on until a relatively appropriate design ees This is the n software prograorith literacy, and freed froner explores a continuun process The fact that various solutions con Its open-endedness projects a sense of change Itsaspect There is an obvious difference between the design experience within a context of assu identity between the body andof the huns in the area of neurobionics, robotic prosthetics, and even the cyber-body could not have ematic context but the one on which the civilization of illiteracy is established

Still, if someone had to choose between the Greek Tehtlessly designed and encased in cheap plastic, the choice would be difficult One is an object of distinct beauty, reflecting an ideal we can no longer support Its distinction made it unavailable to many people who needed such an instruital processing machine, are standardized cohly ra that ever existed The rest is bells and whistles Here is indeed the crux of the matter: The ability to achieve nition that rawunless the creative mind, applied to tasks relevant to hu out of then sometimes seems demonized for e all experience as waste and disdain for the environment, or lack of commitment to the people replaced by new machines That people eventually becon-television sets, electronic gadgets, designer fashi+on, designer drugs-is an irony soon forgotten At other ti a way to maximize the efficiency of hu sense of quality against the background of our obsession with more at the lowest price But it is not so much the activity as the people who are the activity that ful This brings up the identity of the designer in the civilization of illiteracy

Designers master certain parts of the vast realuage: type designers, graphic artists, book 3-diners, architects, or engineers

Son dynae from season to season, year to year; toys are played with; and anin with its own heart (aniinally controlled by design principles There is integrity to design, consistence and pertinence, and there are aesthetic qualities But if anyone would like to study design in its generality, the first lesson would be that there is no alphabet or rule for correct design, and no generally accepted criteria for evaluation Literacy operates froiven in advance) to botton operates the opposite way, fro to a body of experience that seems inexhaustible

People expect their environned (clothes, shoes, furniture, jewelry, perfuan There are n process, ned for public consumption And there is the attened events: birth, baptisraduations (at different ee, anniversaries, pro, funerals, estate execution, and wars As a designed practical experience involving a variety of mediations, life can be very efficient, but probably not rewarding (in terms of quality) at the san activities-products, materials, events They make possible new levels of convenience, but they also reh which hues-of satisfying needs or ence of personality is quite intricate Every practical experience expresses new aspects of the individual Personality integrates these aspects over tiical and cultural characteristics, in the never-ending succession of encounters of new situations, and consequently new people The civilization of illiteracy shi+fts focus fro expectations affordable to everyone The space of choices thus opened is appropriate to the endless quest for novelty, but not necessarily for the affirner disappears (including his or her naned product, material, or event

nobody ever cared to knoho designed the Walkns designer jeans, dresses, glasses, and sneakers, tour packages, and Olyardless of whether they attract o trips

Nanition value alone No one cares whether there is a real person behind the na as the na, watch, sneakers, or fralasses, sells under different identifiers

This has to be seen in the broader picture of the general disconnectedness ahbors or colleagues are, even less who the other people are who naical self-destruction Illiteracy indeed does aith the opaqueness of literacy- based huh which new practical experiences take place make each of us subject to the transparency of illiteracy The result is even deeper integration of the individual in the shared databank of inforh which our profile of con endlessly interprets information Each time we step out of the private sphere-to visit a doctor or lawyer, to buy a pair of shoes, to build a house, to take a trip, to search for information on the Internet-we become more and more transparent, more and more part of the public doe in coence), does not bring people closer As we celebrate new opportunities, we should not lose sight of what is lost in the process

Designing the virtual

The experience of design is one of signs and their infinite manipulation It takes place in an experiential context that moved away from the object, away from immediacy and from co-presence So that signs are as real as anything else When pushi+ng this experience to its liinary territories of extreine a city built underwater, or a spherical house that can be rolled fro as thin as soht, or as thick as tree bark or a rubber tire

One can ient ination is opened to fresh huhtest or heaviest clothing, interconnect with the world through what you wear, interact with new, genetically engineered huardless of how a virtual experience is es and sounds, triggered dreaital embodiment of virtual reality-it escapes literacy-based constraints and ees In fact, if design is a sign focused on the practical experience, the design of virtual space is one level beyond, ie, it is in the n domain This observation defines a realm where the person frees himself from the structures characteristic of literacy

In virtuality, the sequentiality of written language is overwritten by the very configurational nature of the context

Reciprocal relations a objects are not necessarily linear because their descriptions are no longer based on the reductionist approach This is a universe designed as vague and allowing for the logic of vagueness Within virtual space, self-constitution, hence identification, no longer regards cultural reference, which is literacy-based, but a changing self-reference All atte would develop in the absence of language could finally be e whose mind reaches a state of tabula rasa (clean slate) in the virtual That such an experience turns out to be a design experience, not a biological accident (eg, a child who grew up ae fails to develop and whose behavior is uncouth), is relevant insofar as freedoated only in relation to its consequences pertaining to hueneric reality of all and any design practical experience Frons in a state of virtuality, only a sn a chance to transcend virtuality are contextual dependencies within any defined pragners do not si and co and con experiences that are based on knowledge resulting from our interaction with nature But there are inate in the real to imitate in nature that will lead to the co molecules, materials, and machines endoith characteristics that allow for self-repair and virtual environn in the civilization of illiteracy relies forenitive resources Experience, like matic framework, becomes predominantly con hu to the new experiences of service economy, effected differentiations in respect to means of expression and communication, in respect to the role of representation, and to our position in regard to values The electronic data storage and retrieval that coressively replaces it, results froital data processing When, at the social level, representation is replaced by individual activisroups, we also experience a diffusion of politics into the private, and to a certain extent, its appropriation by interest groups asse This change effects a shi+ft from the expectation of authority, connected to literacy-based human experiences, to the slippery authority of individual choice

The designed world of artifacts, environe of the individual) is a world of many choices, but of little concern for value Its life results fron ad infinitumatic conditions embodies expectations associated with illiteracy The object no longer doines, the shi+ft syste the collectibles Quite to the contrary, the new object is designed to be idiot-proof (the gentler naeneralized notion of permissiveness that replaces discipline and self-control in our interaction with artifacts

Design also affects change in our conception of fact and reality, stiinary, the virtual, and the n Facts are replaced by their representations and by representations of representations, and so on until the reference fades into oblivion Henceforth, the positivist expectations ingrained in the experiences of the civilization of literacy are reconstituted as a fraes, seconded by sounds (noise included) I available to everyone, exactly as writing was available to those processed as literates The photographic caht on film-the electronic caitizer are, effectively, e in full control of all its components A sound level can easily be added, and indeed sound auges Interactivity, involved in the design process, adds the dies of the civilization of illiteracy, uses design in its various forram is clear Probably less clear is that the literate experience is itself changed through such instances After all, literacy is the civilization that started with the conventions of writing and grew to the one Book open to all possible interpretations, as these were generated in the attematic contexts Literacy subjected to all the means that become possible in the civilization of illiteracy, in particular to those that design affords, results in the infinity of books, printed for the potential individual reader (or the very limited readershi+p that a title or journal tends to have) who ive it one interpretation (equal to none) by placing it, unopened and unread, on a bookshelf The radical description given above ht still be far away froe points in this direction

On the Internet, we coes as a qualitatively new forrated in the networked world in a number of ways: coe layout, structure of interactive ner, and no one company (not even the institution of defense, which supports networking) can clained this new medium of human practical experiences Many individuals contributed, ns would fit in an evolving whole whose appearance and function (or breakdown) no one could predict These kept changing by the year and hour, and will continue to change for the foreseeable and unforeseeable future