Every invention, every innovation… every solution posed by those preceding this time has raised more questions and produced more problems than the ones to which they were designed in response. Of course, every solution we in this coming information age propose will naturally perform likewise. The extent to which we can minimize the shortcomings in design will be measured by our attempt at solving for as many variables as can be recognized. We can no longer only ask ourselves how something could be done, but had better be ready to ask whether something should be done. Every generation is born into the luxury of hindsight; and we know that we could do most anything we suppose is possible, but have already done a great many things that should never have been accomplished. Or, if that accomplishment serves its immediate purpose, some immediate good, it inevitably becomes the burden of some succeeding condition. With the technologies we use we could do great and terrible things, but to say we should do something is to introduce to the process of design a moral imperative. It will be that moral imperative that sensitizes us to all those variables that in recognition of which we will produce solutions of both broadly versatile conception and modestly specific, local actualization.
We will restrain ourselves. While the temptation is to cram the latest novelties into every design, we must re-evaluate the basis of need. We must consider the life-cycles of our products, obsolescence, and the continued use of resources after its intended function is no longer supported.
We will remember that invention is not creation, and that creative design is the displacement of material. The displacement of material is either the forcible disruption of natural equilibrium, or the necessary release of stress. We must ask what the intended environment needs and what it produces, what the proposed product needs and what it produces, and how the two entities can be paired to complement one another.
We will understand expression as inexorable flatulence due to the digestion of experience. It is neither rational nor reducible. It is as needless as music and as natural as gravity. We will honor that dynamic in at least these two ways: 1) For too long our notion of expression has relied upon the purchase and possession of goods; a notion sold to us in the interest of commerce. A new paradigm should be realized in which expression is no more than a communicative and behavioral interpretation of experience. The foremost objective for any designer is the enrichment of experience for the purpose of encouraging expression. 2) We will promote no programs that seek to misappropriate information technology or the means of communication public and private for the purpose of repressing, surveying, exploiting, or corrupting the liberty and sanctity of human expression.
We plink and sputter. Behind every technologically advanced appendage we can invent is the soft flesh and bone that orchestrates its movements. We design for the flesh and bone not for the advanced appendage. We will endeavor to remain grounded in our respect for the human condition and resist romanticizing the fetishes of industry and technology.
We will be responsive, not resolute. When our fellow citizens insist on behaving otherwise, our response will be resistance. It is our fundamental responsibility to question popular convention regardless of political climate, the answers we accumulate inform our actions for or against popular opinion.
