UGLY: How Unorthodox Thinking Will Save Design, by Tad Toulis
Is 'Good Design' an asphyxiating dogma?
Design is a peculiar activity: It's a creative process, but a process that subscribes to and reinforces certain restrictive attitudes. It can be rigid and self-policing, since a profession that earns its living by discerning what is good and bad must necessarily become judgmental. Ultimately this judgmental nature creates and enshrines certain points of view, which left unchallenged, become dogma. Today, one could argue that this dogma, generally predicated on longstanding ideas of 'rightness' and 'beauty' is choking the profession down, and worse yet, stifling its creativity as it faces some truly great problems—problems which if handled with new thinking and true creativity, will define the substance, practice and contribution of a generation of designers.
Embracing the word "ugly"—so readily identified with everything popular design claims to have been a reaction against—seems a logical choice if we are to create a vision for the practice of design freed from the restrictions and prejudices of its past.
Pretty: Right priced beauty
But wait. Truth and beauty are good things, right? Not necessarily. Design's traditional preference on establishing 'order' has had the consequence of driving a collateral and unchecked pursuit of beauty. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, of course, and as such is subject to the vagaries of cultural bias and popular opinion. By degrees this pursuit of beauty has gradually been replaced with the much more predictable and less admirable accomplishment of achieving 'pretty'. And while consumer culture, planned obsolesce and design culture in general have benefited soundly from the creation, production and documentation of pretty things—the pursuit of pretty hasn't pushed the discipline of design into the tighter, less comfortable and ultimately more rigorous inquiries that outside forces (sustainability for example) are aligning to demand of us.
How might product designers better position the discipline to take on the hairy problems of sustainability, economic uncertainty, global competition and the like? Well, one thing is for certain, simply co-opting present patterns of consumption into activities and services linked to conservation won't get us there. That path might work if the world population of 6.5 billion was to stay fixed, but with an additional 3 billion consumers arriving to the party by 2050 we'll need to find more expedient (read: more creative) solutions.
PrettyUGLY: The case for 'UGLY' thinking in popular design
Whether attributable to a crisis of faith or economic malaise, High Design's recent fascination with the aesthetics of the unorthodox has given rise to some of the freshest design proposals of recent memory. It's too early to tell whether these musings signal a genuine turning point in the evolution of design, but the newfound acceptance of UGLY as a legitimate voice in design sets the stage for some interesting possibilities at a time when the profession faces deep challenges.
Longtime anathema of design circles, I'd like to suggest that design capitalize on UGLY's present arrival on the scene to boldly re-imagine itself and its future. Appropriating UGLY affords a latitude that would serve to liberate design and design thinking, expediting the introduction of new voices and ideas that might stimulate and revitalize the practice of design. Embracing a word so readily identified with everything popular design claims to have been a reaction against seems a logical choice if we are to create a vision for the practice of design freed from the restrictions and prejudices of its past.
UGLY thinking: Where do we look for it?
There are three contemporary developments I believe are already starting to re-characterize design; three developments that when mingled with the liberating effects of thinking UGLY offer potential insights on the future practice and content of design. These developments are: the impact of Computational Culture on design, lessons of Centralized and Decentralized Structures, and the implications of DIY/Hack Culture for product design.
Computational Culture
That the computer and its attendant culture are influencing design is clear. Less clear and certainly less often considered is the specific manner in which the computer is mutating the practice of design itself. Fueled by the power of algorithms, computation culture is radically democratizing and retooling how we execute design. In the visual domains of rule-based systems, dynamic graphics and algorithmic art, new aesthetic vernaculars are being forged. On the process front, the computer's penchant for iteration is formally migrating a generation away from the idea of 'a solution' to the notion of 'a range of' solutions. In so far as these tools anticipate not one but several potential solutions, they are cementing into design the power of the 'happy accident'.
Similarly, the relative ease and economy with which the computer permits us to blend, splice, and mix across source material enhances design's natural inclination to branch and sub-branch into multiple lines of inquiry. In that so much design happens inside the act of iterating and refining, computational culture is empowering the single greatest domain of design: the process itself, or more specifically the 'flow' of the design process. It permits us to slowly relinquish our firm clench on aesthetic expectation, let go of our visual prejudices, and 'give in' to what the process offers up.
Computational culture is also changing design by breaking down long-standing barriers to fabrication and distribution. Rapid prototyping services such as ZapFab, FirstCut and Shapeways offer professionals and non-professionals alike the tools necessary to execute and disseminate their work. Accelerating the situation, an ecosystem of sites like Ponoko and Etsy stand ready to provide these 'blackmarket' results a very real pipeline to consumers. The relatively low barrier of access to these tools in terms of cost and resources means that larger numbers are now able to bring their specific needs and ideas into discussion alongside formal design (aka big D design). While there is no guarantee that the increase in participants will elevate the quality of design work, it does suggest that the small and relatively exclusive core of design culture will be increasingly confronted with new and divergent points of view. And that's a good thing.
Failure to appreciate DIY/Hack Culture is to risk having professional design become as irrelevant to the contemporary landscape as record labels and network television are in the age of iTunes and YouTube.
Centralized and Decentralized Structures
The lessons of Centralized and Decentralized Structures are important to design's future because they bring into discussion the interrelated concepts of platforms and systems—concepts which are essential to the future practice of product design because they invite us to think holistically.
One consequence of computational culture has been to deliver us a shared mental model of the web and an accompanying appreciation for the merits of networked systems. This common understanding is important because it equips all of us—consumers and designers alike—with a scaled model for the forces at work in the environment at large. The forces at work in the node/web dynamic are important because they mirror the forces at work in local/global relationships. In both cases the strengths and weaknesses of networked systems become readily apparent. A virus introduced to a network can start at one node and threaten the health of the entire system. Similarly, pollutants generated in China can cross the pacific and rain down on the western seaboard of North America. Or (borrowing from today's headlines) an economic system built on credit can be felled by the introduction of one flawed instrument: mortgage backed securities, for example. In both models nothing exists in a vacuum; for every action there is a reaction somewhere, sometime, someplace.
The lessons for designers of centralized and decentralized structures aren't just in regard to sustainability and global credit; they also lie in the insights they offer into models of manufacturing and distribution, of resource management and economic compensation. Kiva's Microloans, Zipcar's shared vehicles, Netflix's mega-management of DVDs and a host of emerging service models succeed because of the way in which they leverage the power embedded in networked structures. That the power of these systems is intimately wed to their fragility is a critical lesson for product design as it attempts to address increasingly interconnected problems. As designers we flatter ourselves when we forgo understanding the context of our design efforts or when we lend our professional talents to producing thoughtless iterations of old ideas. Thinking within systems will force us to operate in more responsible ways; to consider both agreeable (easy) and disagreeable (hard) factors as we work to gain understanding of a problem. Mainstreaming resolution of design problems across such contradictory filters is essential if we are to evolve as a profession and as a practice.
DIY/Hack Culture: Voices of the Amateur
DIY/Hack Culture yields its lessons to design through evolving notions of popular aesthetics and consumer behavior. Informing these movements is a dramatic change in the consumer's stance relative to product: a shift from a 'read-only' model of consumption to a 'read-write' model of consumption. The participatory relationship between user and product has always been implicit; what is new is the degree to which consumers can now modulate the performance of products once thought too complex to be modifiable. Like 2x4s in a lumberyard, an emerging generation of consumers sees the shipped product as little more than a jumping off point for solutions that better support their own specific needs, tastes and whims. So much for the voice of the consumer; say hello to the will of the consumer.
The elevation of hack culture from a subversive activity to a pedestrian preoccupation also casts a light on changing notions of propriety. Websites such as LifeHacker, ThinkGeek and Inventables routinely categorize and publish burgeoning catalogs of top hacks. Reviewing these sites frequently, one can catch a glimpse of a new species of product design emerging. Alice Wang's Tyrant alarm which drunk dials your friends if you refuse to turn it off, or ThinkGeek's SnuZnLuz, which threatens to donate your money to the GOP offer up something truly new in consumer electronics: product with a soul layered atop its physical design and functional OS.
DIY/Hack Culture is also significant because it starts to break down the neat partitions between consumer and fabricator upon which contemporary product design has found its present place as arbitrator. Regardless of your position on amateur culture, it is clear that formal design will need to reevaluate its positioning if it is to continue to act as mediator between these converging groups. Failure to do so is to risk having professional design become as irrelevant to the contemporary landscape as record labels and network television are in the age of iTunes and YouTube. In a marketplace where designer, manufacturer and consumer finally meet on an equitable plane, the tools of specialization we've inherited will need to be rethought. If product evolves to accommodate the consumer's ultimate modification and final purposing of the object, what is the design process that supports this new definition of product?
How might product designers better position the discipline to take on the hairy problems of sustainability, economic uncertainty, global competition and the like? Well, one thing is for certain, simply co-opting present patterns of consumption into activities and services linked to conservation won't get us there.
What does it all mean?
Design has long been about solving problems. Today the problems we face are in part problems created by our own professional activity. In such a climate, continued reliance on the practices and behaviors that led us here just won't do. New solutions need to be found. New practices identified. Let's take a look at what an UGLY methodology might look like:
General assumptions of UGLY:
- Question existing assumptions (i.e. is beauty intrinsically admirable?).
- Utilize intellect as well as intuition; temper your muscle memory with intellectual rigor.
- Don't rely on what you can anticipate; believe in the creative power of experimentation.
- Change: expect it, embrace it, understand it, leverage it.
- Sustainability: stop segregating it into a class of problems separate than the one you are currently working on.
Process notes for UGLY:
- Iterate Iterate Iterate: work to get it right, respect the resources required to execute your solution.
- Cut/Paste/Slice. Don't get locked in, draw upon sources from outside of your core discipline.
- Move in, out and across mediums frequently. The change in perspective will serve you and your ideas, forcing connections that might otherwise remain hidden.
- Be prepared to walk away from the problem you are tackling, but come back.
Behaviors of UGLY:
- Don't know, Do. Invest the time to vet out your ideas and assumptions.
- Listen to those you don't agree with, you'll learn more.
- Try things that scare you, you'll grow and your tool kit will as well.
- Co-opt an opposing point of view: live in the skin of another viewpoint.
- Disagree early and frequently, the debate will add depth to your solutions.
UGLY is about fundamentally recognizing the role 'popular' design has played in creating the culture of disposable consumption. UGLY seeks to utilize design's unique position as co-conspirator and change agent to help evolve a practice of consumer design that goes beyond stylistic achievement in its effort to seek out new techniques and processes that can progress the profession toward an offering better aligned with contemporary problems. While UGLY finds its name in a word seemingly at odds with aesthetic achievement, it does not reject aesthetic achievement. UGLY rejects aesthetic achievement only when it is arrived at to the exclusion or disregard of contemporary factors such as environmental impact, excessive cost or redundancy of purpose. If classic design of the post-war period arose as a response to a world without order, can there be any better chance for our profession then to adopt a new set of ideas in the face of world comprised of too much order, too much corporate influence, and an increasingly borderless consumer culture? I doubt it.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Very nice mobile phone advert
Nice video, highlights the importance of packaging design as part of the user experience design of a product.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
PingMag from Tokyo
Go to http://pingmag.jp and look under the Product Design section, you will find this Umbrella
Check this out, not just the article but the site, which are both very very good.
Monday, August 11, 2008
panotram
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_file.asp?sort_by=1&portfolio_id=1354297&individual_id=213880
Interesting concept and 3d modelling of Dima Dadashev
Interesting concept and 3d modelling of Dima Dadashev
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
The good the bad and the ugly
You take a call on which is which...
http://www.thebrowncorporation.com/
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/athome/373219_cheek02.html
http://watchismo.blogspot.com/
http://www.thebrowncorporation.com/
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/athome/373219_cheek02.html
http://watchismo.blogspot.com/
Monday, August 4, 2008
intolerance of tolerance
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The ten commandments of Design
http://www.vitsoe.com/ten_commandments.php?&weblang=en&rgmark=wl
Dieter Rams, the head of Braun Design for four decades, explains his ten commandments for good design.
Also and interesting comparison between Braun/Rams and Apple/Ive in the picture
Monday, July 28, 2008
Glass Art
Movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5aNdoL_9Jo&NR=1
We were just browsing through Youtube looking for something interesting to watch when we came upon this video of a guy making a showpiece using Glass Blowing. What interested us a lot about this video was that this person was using a Gas blower and simple tools to make his work of art. Seeing him work made us really enthusiastic since the whole setup looked like something that even we could setup. Immediately we showed this video to David and he said that if we can get the materials for it we might actually be able to create a Glass Blowing section to the workshop. Though it seems like a piece of cake but we knew it might not be that easy since doing glass blowing is a very difficult skill.
We were just browsing through Youtube looking for something interesting to watch when we came upon this video of a guy making a showpiece using Glass Blowing. What interested us a lot about this video was that this person was using a Gas blower and simple tools to make his work of art. Seeing him work made us really enthusiastic since the whole setup looked like something that even we could setup. Immediately we showed this video to David and he said that if we can get the materials for it we might actually be able to create a Glass Blowing section to the workshop. Though it seems like a piece of cake but we knew it might not be that easy since doing glass blowing is a very difficult skill.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Majic tap
HOW??
The magic tap, which appears to float in the sky with an endless supply of water.
In actuality, there is a pipe hidden in the stream of water. The construction is fascinating and is easy to make,
if the pipe is made of transparent Perspex than you would never see it inside the water stream.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
sustainable design ideas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n77BfxnVlyc&NR=1
Janine Benyus: 12 sustainable design ideas from nature
Biomimicry, don't stop in between, its wonderful.
Janine Benyus: 12 sustainable design ideas from nature
Biomimicry, don't stop in between, its wonderful.
Relieves muscular pains and common colds -
Deep, focused warmth..
Philips infrared lamp gives pain relief for muscles and joints. Its 150Watt infrared warmth penetrates deep into skin, improving blood circulation thereby giving relief for areas of 20x30cm. Concentric rings help to focus on specific spots.
Core 77: Changing the change at Turin, Italy
Bill Moggridge (IDEO), John Thackara (Doors of Perception), Josephine Green (Philips Design), Geetha Narayanan (Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore), and Luigi Ferrara (Institute without Boundaries, Toronto) were only some of the speakers and guests at the highly stimulating Changing the Change conference that took place in the impressive Molecular Biotechnology Research Centre of Turin, Italy, July 10-12.
This outstanding conference "on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability" was the brainchild of Ezio Manzini (professor of industrial design at the Milan Polytechnic). Jointly organised by the Polytechnic universities of Milan and Turin (with extensive support from their masters and doctoral students), Changing the Change was part of the programme of Turin World Design Capital 2008.
In this longer article I have tried to open up this important conference to those who were not there, which is made easier by the fact that all 138 papers are already online.
This outstanding conference "on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability" was the brainchild of Ezio Manzini (professor of industrial design at the Milan Polytechnic). Jointly organised by the Polytechnic universities of Milan and Turin (with extensive support from their masters and doctoral students), Changing the Change was part of the programme of Turin World Design Capital 2008.
In this longer article I have tried to open up this important conference to those who were not there, which is made easier by the fact that all 138 papers are already online.
design, economics & sustainability
It's the Economy, Stupid: A macroeconomic primer for design(ers) and sustainability, by Robert Blinn
Last week the International Energy Agency called for serious investment into alternative energy and carbon sequestering. At the same time, United States Senate blithely blocked environmental legislation with many elected officials indicating that our suffering economy could not bear such a cost. While the gulf between these two modes of thinking seems irreconcilable, a reframing of terms may go a long way toward closing the philosophical distance.
Having studied economics as an undergraduate and then worked on Wall Street for nearly a decade, I feel relatively attuned to the economy and economic thought. Having read and studied design for the last four years, however, I've begun to realize that much of what I studied and practiced (in both design and economics) was based on misunderstandings and taxonomic differences between science, economics, politics, and design.
While it is tempting to treat sustainability as a production or a materials problem, such a view neglects the realities of our global economic system. To truly do "sustainable" design, the solution must reach beyond the drawing board and into economic reality. Economists and scientists have actually already paved the way toward robust arguments for sustainable energy and design, but to understand them it is first necessary to profoundly reframe the lens through which we view the world.
Looking at the world through such a lens makes one thing clear: Despite our mansions and our roadways, our designer jeans and our iPhones, human beings have made very little. Instead we've transmuted stored energy into temporary value in exchange for long-term waste. All of the growth that our politicians seek to perpetuate is not growth at all.
Politicians and naysayers will often object to sustainable initiatives on the grounds that they limit "growth" and increase "costs." While these arguments remain difficult to refute on a commercial level, two simple observations are enough to defuse or derail even the most economically sophisticated political arguments against sustainability. Market forces cannot align with the common interest of humanity so long as prices reflect costs and benefits that occur in: (A) displaced locations and (B) periods of time other than the present. This piece of knowledge casts an "inconvenient" shadow over our current system of production, but in doing so provides hope not only for the environment but also for our economic future.
Displaced Locations: The Tragedy of the CommonsIn the past, economic growth has been partially predicated upon population growth. As long as the number of people kept growing, manufacture and production could be expected to grow at a commensurate rate. To date our growth has been effected as a zero-sum game in which we displaced other species and used their habitats and bodies as raw materials. Individuals and corporations could pollute the environment freely and were incentivized to do so before their neighbors had the chance. This should come as no surprise to even the most conservative businesspeople, since there's already an economic term for the results: The Tragedy of the Commons.When mankind took up only a small portion of the planet, our growth could subsist on the losses of the far larger animal population. Now, instead of displacing the habitats of others, we're beginning to disturb our own. The "commons" were so large relative to us that our abuses were barely noticeable, but now that we're over six billion strong, our damage is starting to show. We're contributing to what's being termed the anthropocene era, where human pollution is influencing the geological fate of our planet. The commons can no longer afford to be discounted; they're all we have.The tragedy of the commons is a type of collective action problem, a social trap where all parties agree that action should be taken, but gains will not be realized unless they all act as one. While each player knows what would be best for the communal good, self-maximizing choices fail to realize the optimal outcome for all parties.Fortunately, democratic agents can recognize the greater good and voluntarily restrict their actions for the betterment of all. To date, the tragedy of the commons has been dealt with by national governments. In the global scheme, however, bickering nations have only further displaced the problem of the commons to a larger venue. While daunting, any solution must come through collective action a global level. Organizations like the IAE and initiatives like the Millennium Development Goals are a step in the right direction, but no pan-global organization has the capacity to enforce them at the moment (sorry United Nations). With that disappointment in hand, we must search for alternative solutions to the problem of sustainability.There's no Time like the Present: Net Energy vs. Net EntropyAnother economic paradox stems from an incompatibility between what we perceive as economic growth and natural paradigms of growth. Historically, there have only been a few primary inputs to the system of life on earth: solar energy, geothermal energy and time. Excluding meteorites, no new physical matter has ever been produced. Instead, the cycle of life has been ruled by transformation and transmutation, with solar and geothermal energy as a guide. Human beings, however, seem to care little for the labors of time. Instead, we have been remarkably adroit at using energy sources from other eras (burning fossil fuels collected over millennia, eating high-trophic level foods, and chopping down old-growth forests). Looking at the world through such a lens makes one thing clear: Despite our mansions and our roadways, our designer jeans and our iPhones, human beings have made very little. Instead we've transmuted stored energy into temporary value in exchange for long-term waste. All of the growth that our politicians seek to perpetuate is not growth at all. It burns stored solar energy to provide the illusion of growth. The amount of stored energy, real value, in the world is actually shrinking. Our process of "growth" is entropic, creating local pockets of order at a greater net cost in energy.
While it is tempting to treat sustainability as a production or a materials problem, such a view neglects the realities of our global economic system. To truly do "sustainable" design, the solution must reach beyond the drawing board and into economic reality.Fortunately, unlike the problem of the commons, sustainable energy is not a zero-sum game. While the sun's rays impart the earth with tens of thousands of terawatts of power, human consumption remains denominated in double digits. Any portion of solar power that we can claim is a permanent annuity. Admittedly the decision not to purchase hydrocarbons at artificially reduced prices does supply a competitive disadvantage for any nation who chooses to do so, but any investment in sustainable energy (taken in from the sun using either physical or biological mechanisms) yields ongoing results.
In other words, renewable energy is an investment into real growth. Rather than burning what economists refer to as stocks (our oil reserves), we would be investing in a flow (an ongoing stream of revenue, resources and value). Further, sustainable solar or wind power also tends to be local power. Through a geological accident, vast stores of hydrocarbons happen to be stored below the Middle East. The sun's rays and the winds, however, are shared across the earth. By investing in solar energy, we're investing locally rather than adding to the trade deficit. Any politician or business person who makes the claim that sustainable energy will hurt the economy is hopelessly out of date. Quite simply, we've never, ever had a growth economy. Perhaps this crisis is the time to start.True Costs (and paying for them one way or another)Most of the problems our society is experiencing today stem from a failure to tabulate true costs of products. Indeed, barring backyard gardening and pedestrian travel, most of us have never paid the true temporal or geographic costs of a product in our lives. Now that we're feeling the pain of the oil crisis, we're realizing for the first time the true cost of energy (as priced into our means of production and transportation).
We're finally paying costs that we'd relegated to what traditional economic thought disregards as externalities (factors that aren't included in a cost calculus). Right now the sticker price in dollars of most products utterly fails to represent the environmental impact required for its production. Books like Cradle to Cradle, or the European system of prepaid disposal begin to tackle the fundamentals of external cost, but until it is done on a national or worldwide basis, our global economy won't be able to efficiently allocate resources; and that is a critical argument for any manufacturer to understand.
While we have known since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that a top-down dictatorial system can't possibly allocate resources effectively, our current economic crisis is beginning to demonstrate that laissez-faire policies fail to safeguard the public good, another form of sub-optimal allocation. Although the market remains the best way to efficiently allocate individual resources, even the most die-hard capitalist will admit that problems of the commons are exceptions to the rule. Rather than a government-mandated economy or an economically-driven government, some compromise is necessary. A mechanism to include the public good in capitalist transactions must be found. For now, pigovian taxes, cap-and-trade policies and carbon taxes are the best tools we have for the government to implement protective policies without short-circuiting market forces.While it's really easy for designers to get preoccupied with specifics and technologies, if the true costs of production are not included in immediate prices, people will continue to purchase seemingly inexpensive products that harbor large and hidden environmental costs. So as long as some providers embed their cost of production into the environment instead of the price tag, ethical manufacturers will be penalized for charging ethical prices, and the mass adoption required for manufacturing efficiency will be tragically delayed. Economic forces are excellent at distributing funding to ensure that the right initiatives get the right R&D, but until prices reflect real environmental and long-term costs, consumer expenditures will not be effectively allocated according to our needs.
When we imagine wealth, it's easy to get caught up in the idea of material possessions. Predictably, in a system with no inputs (which is largely the way we treat the world now), competition will center on matter. In a system with solar inputs, however, matter remains important to stockpile, but efficiency in storing energy creates an ongoing reward. Since matter is finite and can only be squabbled over rather than created, long-lasting gains cannot be found there. Instead, leveraging, using and storing solar energy would be the only way to create lasting gains. By harnessing external solar inputs, the net wealth (net energy) of the system could grow in a way that has been forgotten since the Precambrian.
Toward a New "Gold Standard"I'm a die-hard capitalist, and yet I'm beginning to realize that market forces no longer protect the common good. Those protections are left for democratic consensus instead. For that to happen the public must be educated, and controls must be put in place to safeguard its commons. Designers have long served as the interface between corporations, scientists and the public. Now that the public and private spheres have intersected on environmental issues, all of us (designers included) must be the mouthpiece for the will of the public, educating and demonstrating how capital should be allocated.Fortunately, when our government speaks of growth, that growth does not need to be zero-sum. Growth can come not only from increases in production and population, but also from increases in efficiency, and we see technology growing at exponential levels that would have made Malthus or Moore proud. Now that the Internet and the global information economy have rightly taken center stage for humanity's most promising achievement to date (can you even remember life pre-Wiki?), the synergies and non-zero-sum games that come from human cooperation are poised to take us toward a technological singularity promising exponential growth.Governments (and most particularly our own) can serve their interests, along with that of the corporations and their people by enacting price controls, taxes and/or cap-and-trade policies on hydrocarbon energy. If this can be done with a national or international consensus, as variously proposed by organizations like the IAE, thinkers like Jeffrey Sachs, commentators like Thomas Friedman, and even industry tycoons like Jim Rogers propose, it would benefit us all in the long term by evenly distributing the short-term costs and leaving no loss of competitive advantage. This remains the only path for the maintenance of the commons, but any one country choosing to convert to sustainable energy, even acting unilaterally, could also set itself up for real long-term growth.
Designers have long served as the interface between corporations, scientists and the public. Now that the public and private spheres have intersected on environmental issues, all of us (designers included) must be the mouthpiece for the will of the public, educating and demonstrating how capital should be allocated.
If we begin to tax hydrocarbons to better reflect the damage they cause to the commons, the government would immediately receive funds that it could invest into renewable energy for our future. More importantly, such a tax would make sustainable energy appear cheaper relative to oil. Because mass production operates on economies of scale, every dollar spent on sustainable energy rather than oil is effectively a vote to invest in R&D as well. Consequently, a carbon tax not only provides funding for public research, but also indirectly pushes the private sector towards sustainable development. America, in particular, will be hobbled by rising energy prices because of the vast and extensive roadways that separate our population, manufacturing and agricultural centers. Perhaps more than any other country, we would benefit from renewable energy; once we provide incentives to overcome the externalities, our extensive technological and capital infrastructure will pave the path sooner than the pundits imagined.Government sponsored sustainable energy initiatives are not expensive travesties. They are instead the new gold standard--a mechanism to create a new currency reflective of the solar energy absorbed and retained by the earth in real time. Rather than basing our economy on precious metals or petroleum locked within the earth, all transactions should be denominated in sustainably produced BTUs or calories, which are the only measures of real and lasting value our planet has ever known.
While some may discount such thinking as naive, I retort that the alternative is tragic, and the world cannot afford to be anything but utopian at this juncture. We, as human beings, are gifted with foresight. Now is the time to use it. A growing scientific consensus is demonstrating that tragedy looms, and an enlightened minority offers ways around it. It is time to let our higher processes overcome our baser nature. This can only be accomplished by entreating our governments to enact global regulation along the lines the International Energy Agency proposes. We are the polis, we are the people, and we need to let our wills be known.That is the world I'd like to give to my children's children, but for some reason that paradise seems so far away. It isn't as long or hard a journey as one might think. Anyone who tells you it's not worth the trip is acting in their own self-interest and at great cost to the rest of us. Those voices must be corrected, or collectively shouted out. Let's silence the free riders, lend our voices to the politicians and all take a walk toward that future together. It's closer than you might think.
- - - - -
Robert is an NYC based industrial designer with an emphasis on industry. The work he's doing in fluid dynamics might someday translate into improved water filtration and desalination systems, but he realizes that without price intervention it might never be economically feasible. He's happy to say that he has not yet littered the landscape with injection molded plastic knick-knacks, but freely admits that he still isn't immune to lusting for useless baubles. Finally, he'd like to tell the readership that he's more a scientist than a proselytizer and he really isn't into this whole "call to action" thing, but is beginning to realize that the crisis is getting so urgent that every added voice helps.
Photo image by Wendy Moody
Tuesday, July 01 • Permalink • Posted in Featured Items Digg This! Save to del.icio.us Submit to Reddit Stumble It!
Having studied economics as an undergraduate and then worked on Wall Street for nearly a decade, I feel relatively attuned to the economy and economic thought. Having read and studied design for the last four years, however, I've begun to realize that much of what I studied and practiced (in both design and economics) was based on misunderstandings and taxonomic differences between science, economics, politics, and design.
While it is tempting to treat sustainability as a production or a materials problem, such a view neglects the realities of our global economic system. To truly do "sustainable" design, the solution must reach beyond the drawing board and into economic reality. Economists and scientists have actually already paved the way toward robust arguments for sustainable energy and design, but to understand them it is first necessary to profoundly reframe the lens through which we view the world.
Looking at the world through such a lens makes one thing clear: Despite our mansions and our roadways, our designer jeans and our iPhones, human beings have made very little. Instead we've transmuted stored energy into temporary value in exchange for long-term waste. All of the growth that our politicians seek to perpetuate is not growth at all.
Politicians and naysayers will often object to sustainable initiatives on the grounds that they limit "growth" and increase "costs." While these arguments remain difficult to refute on a commercial level, two simple observations are enough to defuse or derail even the most economically sophisticated political arguments against sustainability. Market forces cannot align with the common interest of humanity so long as prices reflect costs and benefits that occur in: (A) displaced locations and (B) periods of time other than the present. This piece of knowledge casts an "inconvenient" shadow over our current system of production, but in doing so provides hope not only for the environment but also for our economic future.
Displaced Locations: The Tragedy of the CommonsIn the past, economic growth has been partially predicated upon population growth. As long as the number of people kept growing, manufacture and production could be expected to grow at a commensurate rate. To date our growth has been effected as a zero-sum game in which we displaced other species and used their habitats and bodies as raw materials. Individuals and corporations could pollute the environment freely and were incentivized to do so before their neighbors had the chance. This should come as no surprise to even the most conservative businesspeople, since there's already an economic term for the results: The Tragedy of the Commons.When mankind took up only a small portion of the planet, our growth could subsist on the losses of the far larger animal population. Now, instead of displacing the habitats of others, we're beginning to disturb our own. The "commons" were so large relative to us that our abuses were barely noticeable, but now that we're over six billion strong, our damage is starting to show. We're contributing to what's being termed the anthropocene era, where human pollution is influencing the geological fate of our planet. The commons can no longer afford to be discounted; they're all we have.The tragedy of the commons is a type of collective action problem, a social trap where all parties agree that action should be taken, but gains will not be realized unless they all act as one. While each player knows what would be best for the communal good, self-maximizing choices fail to realize the optimal outcome for all parties.Fortunately, democratic agents can recognize the greater good and voluntarily restrict their actions for the betterment of all. To date, the tragedy of the commons has been dealt with by national governments. In the global scheme, however, bickering nations have only further displaced the problem of the commons to a larger venue. While daunting, any solution must come through collective action a global level. Organizations like the IAE and initiatives like the Millennium Development Goals are a step in the right direction, but no pan-global organization has the capacity to enforce them at the moment (sorry United Nations). With that disappointment in hand, we must search for alternative solutions to the problem of sustainability.There's no Time like the Present: Net Energy vs. Net EntropyAnother economic paradox stems from an incompatibility between what we perceive as economic growth and natural paradigms of growth. Historically, there have only been a few primary inputs to the system of life on earth: solar energy, geothermal energy and time. Excluding meteorites, no new physical matter has ever been produced. Instead, the cycle of life has been ruled by transformation and transmutation, with solar and geothermal energy as a guide. Human beings, however, seem to care little for the labors of time. Instead, we have been remarkably adroit at using energy sources from other eras (burning fossil fuels collected over millennia, eating high-trophic level foods, and chopping down old-growth forests). Looking at the world through such a lens makes one thing clear: Despite our mansions and our roadways, our designer jeans and our iPhones, human beings have made very little. Instead we've transmuted stored energy into temporary value in exchange for long-term waste. All of the growth that our politicians seek to perpetuate is not growth at all. It burns stored solar energy to provide the illusion of growth. The amount of stored energy, real value, in the world is actually shrinking. Our process of "growth" is entropic, creating local pockets of order at a greater net cost in energy.
While it is tempting to treat sustainability as a production or a materials problem, such a view neglects the realities of our global economic system. To truly do "sustainable" design, the solution must reach beyond the drawing board and into economic reality.Fortunately, unlike the problem of the commons, sustainable energy is not a zero-sum game. While the sun's rays impart the earth with tens of thousands of terawatts of power, human consumption remains denominated in double digits. Any portion of solar power that we can claim is a permanent annuity. Admittedly the decision not to purchase hydrocarbons at artificially reduced prices does supply a competitive disadvantage for any nation who chooses to do so, but any investment in sustainable energy (taken in from the sun using either physical or biological mechanisms) yields ongoing results.
In other words, renewable energy is an investment into real growth. Rather than burning what economists refer to as stocks (our oil reserves), we would be investing in a flow (an ongoing stream of revenue, resources and value). Further, sustainable solar or wind power also tends to be local power. Through a geological accident, vast stores of hydrocarbons happen to be stored below the Middle East. The sun's rays and the winds, however, are shared across the earth. By investing in solar energy, we're investing locally rather than adding to the trade deficit. Any politician or business person who makes the claim that sustainable energy will hurt the economy is hopelessly out of date. Quite simply, we've never, ever had a growth economy. Perhaps this crisis is the time to start.True Costs (and paying for them one way or another)Most of the problems our society is experiencing today stem from a failure to tabulate true costs of products. Indeed, barring backyard gardening and pedestrian travel, most of us have never paid the true temporal or geographic costs of a product in our lives. Now that we're feeling the pain of the oil crisis, we're realizing for the first time the true cost of energy (as priced into our means of production and transportation).
We're finally paying costs that we'd relegated to what traditional economic thought disregards as externalities (factors that aren't included in a cost calculus). Right now the sticker price in dollars of most products utterly fails to represent the environmental impact required for its production. Books like Cradle to Cradle, or the European system of prepaid disposal begin to tackle the fundamentals of external cost, but until it is done on a national or worldwide basis, our global economy won't be able to efficiently allocate resources; and that is a critical argument for any manufacturer to understand.
While we have known since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that a top-down dictatorial system can't possibly allocate resources effectively, our current economic crisis is beginning to demonstrate that laissez-faire policies fail to safeguard the public good, another form of sub-optimal allocation. Although the market remains the best way to efficiently allocate individual resources, even the most die-hard capitalist will admit that problems of the commons are exceptions to the rule. Rather than a government-mandated economy or an economically-driven government, some compromise is necessary. A mechanism to include the public good in capitalist transactions must be found. For now, pigovian taxes, cap-and-trade policies and carbon taxes are the best tools we have for the government to implement protective policies without short-circuiting market forces.While it's really easy for designers to get preoccupied with specifics and technologies, if the true costs of production are not included in immediate prices, people will continue to purchase seemingly inexpensive products that harbor large and hidden environmental costs. So as long as some providers embed their cost of production into the environment instead of the price tag, ethical manufacturers will be penalized for charging ethical prices, and the mass adoption required for manufacturing efficiency will be tragically delayed. Economic forces are excellent at distributing funding to ensure that the right initiatives get the right R&D, but until prices reflect real environmental and long-term costs, consumer expenditures will not be effectively allocated according to our needs.
When we imagine wealth, it's easy to get caught up in the idea of material possessions. Predictably, in a system with no inputs (which is largely the way we treat the world now), competition will center on matter. In a system with solar inputs, however, matter remains important to stockpile, but efficiency in storing energy creates an ongoing reward. Since matter is finite and can only be squabbled over rather than created, long-lasting gains cannot be found there. Instead, leveraging, using and storing solar energy would be the only way to create lasting gains. By harnessing external solar inputs, the net wealth (net energy) of the system could grow in a way that has been forgotten since the Precambrian.
Toward a New "Gold Standard"I'm a die-hard capitalist, and yet I'm beginning to realize that market forces no longer protect the common good. Those protections are left for democratic consensus instead. For that to happen the public must be educated, and controls must be put in place to safeguard its commons. Designers have long served as the interface between corporations, scientists and the public. Now that the public and private spheres have intersected on environmental issues, all of us (designers included) must be the mouthpiece for the will of the public, educating and demonstrating how capital should be allocated.Fortunately, when our government speaks of growth, that growth does not need to be zero-sum. Growth can come not only from increases in production and population, but also from increases in efficiency, and we see technology growing at exponential levels that would have made Malthus or Moore proud. Now that the Internet and the global information economy have rightly taken center stage for humanity's most promising achievement to date (can you even remember life pre-Wiki?), the synergies and non-zero-sum games that come from human cooperation are poised to take us toward a technological singularity promising exponential growth.Governments (and most particularly our own) can serve their interests, along with that of the corporations and their people by enacting price controls, taxes and/or cap-and-trade policies on hydrocarbon energy. If this can be done with a national or international consensus, as variously proposed by organizations like the IAE, thinkers like Jeffrey Sachs, commentators like Thomas Friedman, and even industry tycoons like Jim Rogers propose, it would benefit us all in the long term by evenly distributing the short-term costs and leaving no loss of competitive advantage. This remains the only path for the maintenance of the commons, but any one country choosing to convert to sustainable energy, even acting unilaterally, could also set itself up for real long-term growth.
Designers have long served as the interface between corporations, scientists and the public. Now that the public and private spheres have intersected on environmental issues, all of us (designers included) must be the mouthpiece for the will of the public, educating and demonstrating how capital should be allocated.
If we begin to tax hydrocarbons to better reflect the damage they cause to the commons, the government would immediately receive funds that it could invest into renewable energy for our future. More importantly, such a tax would make sustainable energy appear cheaper relative to oil. Because mass production operates on economies of scale, every dollar spent on sustainable energy rather than oil is effectively a vote to invest in R&D as well. Consequently, a carbon tax not only provides funding for public research, but also indirectly pushes the private sector towards sustainable development. America, in particular, will be hobbled by rising energy prices because of the vast and extensive roadways that separate our population, manufacturing and agricultural centers. Perhaps more than any other country, we would benefit from renewable energy; once we provide incentives to overcome the externalities, our extensive technological and capital infrastructure will pave the path sooner than the pundits imagined.Government sponsored sustainable energy initiatives are not expensive travesties. They are instead the new gold standard--a mechanism to create a new currency reflective of the solar energy absorbed and retained by the earth in real time. Rather than basing our economy on precious metals or petroleum locked within the earth, all transactions should be denominated in sustainably produced BTUs or calories, which are the only measures of real and lasting value our planet has ever known.
While some may discount such thinking as naive, I retort that the alternative is tragic, and the world cannot afford to be anything but utopian at this juncture. We, as human beings, are gifted with foresight. Now is the time to use it. A growing scientific consensus is demonstrating that tragedy looms, and an enlightened minority offers ways around it. It is time to let our higher processes overcome our baser nature. This can only be accomplished by entreating our governments to enact global regulation along the lines the International Energy Agency proposes. We are the polis, we are the people, and we need to let our wills be known.That is the world I'd like to give to my children's children, but for some reason that paradise seems so far away. It isn't as long or hard a journey as one might think. Anyone who tells you it's not worth the trip is acting in their own self-interest and at great cost to the rest of us. Those voices must be corrected, or collectively shouted out. Let's silence the free riders, lend our voices to the politicians and all take a walk toward that future together. It's closer than you might think.
- - - - -
Robert is an NYC based industrial designer with an emphasis on industry. The work he's doing in fluid dynamics might someday translate into improved water filtration and desalination systems, but he realizes that without price intervention it might never be economically feasible. He's happy to say that he has not yet littered the landscape with injection molded plastic knick-knacks, but freely admits that he still isn't immune to lusting for useless baubles. Finally, he'd like to tell the readership that he's more a scientist than a proselytizer and he really isn't into this whole "call to action" thing, but is beginning to realize that the crisis is getting so urgent that every added voice helps.
Photo image by Wendy Moody
Tuesday, July 01 • Permalink • Posted in Featured Items Digg This! Save to del.icio.us Submit to Reddit Stumble It!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)