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 Design: Purpose, Form, and Meaning
Book by John F. Pile; University of Massachusetts Press, 1979
Introduction
IT IS A COMMON, usually critical, observation on life in the modern, technologically developed world to say that it is materialistic. We are a population heavily oriented toward things. We work to produce things and to earn what we need to acquire them for ourselves. We measure individual success largely in terms of things owned--houses, cars, television sets and similar consumer goods. We talk of a standard of living which is measured, in the main, by the per capita count of refrigerators, flush toilets and bathtubs. Scientific and technical achievements often occur as events (a moon landing, for example), yet they are events accomplished with the aid of new and remarkable things such as supersonic aircraft, rockets, orbiting satellites, atomic reactors or, at a different scale, artificial heart valves or kidneys. The concept of progress in human affairs is, if we are realistic, almost entirely concerned with materialistic, that is to say, technological progress. We describe as primitive any society that exists with a limited inventory of comparatively simple things. When we speak of underdeveloped countries, we mean nations whose per capita count of technically advanced goods is low. The absence of technically advanced equipment of course has consequences for underdeveloped countries. Poor diet, disease and a generally low standard of living are characteristic of underdevelopment but the remedies we know of are, in general, technological. Electric power, gasoline engines, modern hospitals, printed books, radios and television sets are proposed as solutions to world problems by the developed countries that produce them and by the people who lack them.
Historically, the rise of civilization is clearly traceable in these technological terms. If we seek a similar history of progress in other terms, such as humane and intelligent behavior, quality of thought, or artistic achievement, the concept of progress becomes very doubtful. We often pretend that we can trace progress in such terms, but it is difficult to make a strong case for them. The impersonal brutality of modern warfare makes savage war seem almost humane in comparison. Cave art and primitive African art are different from the art of the Renaissance or that of our own time, but it is hard to make a case for a steady line of improvement. The literature of prehistoric Greece, of biblical times or of the Renaissance hold up against the best modern work.
It has become fashionable at the present time to attack technology and the special kind of progress it offers, because the realization that technology does not in itself solve all problems is a comparatively recent one. Proposals for slowing technological advance and even for some partial return to "simpler ways" are now very popular and, in many cases, are probably sound. It is assumed here, however, that we are destined to live in a technically complex world in which things inevitably assume major importance. Even those who urge a return to simpler ways usually invest that simpler world with houses, plumbing, powered machinery, printed books and electronic communication. Such a list is already an inventory of a highly technological society, heavily focused on the apparatus of modern living. |
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We are concerned here with a peculiar paradox of modern life. While we are object oriented, preoccupied with the production, acquisition and consumption of things, we appear curiously indifferent to the character of those things that mean so much to us. We seem to be utterly uncritical of objects, willing to accept and use things that perform badly, are wasteful of our time, our energy, and our physical resources, that are harmful or dangerous, produce troublesome wastes, are hard to maintain and, when finally discarded, pose burdensome problems of disposal. In spite of our belief that we live in the civilization with the highest level of technical achievement in history, we accept with enthusiasm some of the worst artifacts that humanity has ever endured. Average people, or consumers, obviously do not agree to any significant extent with this negative evaluation. It is natural for most people to assume that the products of modern technology are highly desirable. They make possible a way of life very different from any experienced in the past or in underdeveloped parts of the world today. To suggest that all the advantages of modern technology should be given up would be a message with no chance of acceptance.
The struggle between the old ways, whatever they may have been, and new technology has been going on since the beginning of civilization. Stone axes and grass huts were technological inventions introducing improved ways of life. Apart from political history, with its stories of battles and conquests, the history of increasingly civilized everyday life is simply a history of such inventions. Everyone is aware of the sudden acceleration in invention and technological change within the last century or two. Beginning with the industrial revolution, technological change began to accelerate in a way that now makes it increasingly uncertain whether change is automatically to be considered improvement.
This book is concerned with a conviction that the things which make up the modern, manmade, technological world are in most cases badly designed. ("Things" is used in a broad sense to include everything from the manmodified landscape, the city, town or suburb down to the smallest of everyday objects.) The promise of advantage which inventions offer is, more often than not, reduced to dissatisfaction and distress by a failure in our way of deciding how things shall be made. Our lack of precise language to define these concerns is, in a way, a confirmation of this diagnosis. Everyone understands what an invention is; we all know what it is to make something, but the intermediate steps between invention and the delivery of manufactured products dissolves into a mist of unclarity. The gasoline engine is an invention (or perhaps a group of inventions), but the automobile we see in the showroom is not an invention--we call it a product. How has it come to be made exactly as it is, not larger or smaller, not some other shape or color, a mass of details all chosen for us in some obscure way? What name shall we give to these processes of applied technology that deliver their fruits to us for everyday use? All the words we can suggest are in some way unsatisfactory. Engineering describes the work of the specialists who convert invention to practical, produceable devices. Design describes the processes of selecting shapes, sizes, materials and colors to establish the form of something that is to be made. A major part of the engineers' work is design, yet engineers usually avoid aspects of design that are not primarily technical. In many of the artifacts of modern life, technical aspects of design are important to performance, but not to form. A television set works as it does because of the engineering of its electronic parts, but its shape, size, color and details have little necessary connection with its electronic realities. A telephone instrument works as it does because of a complex system, largely unseen, to which it is connected. The instrument that we use can have an infinite variety of shapes and still serve its technical functions... |
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