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The folks from IDEO contributed with GOOD magazine first anniversary issue’s graphic statement with two images that help us visualize, not only the spirit of the magazine’s main feature [and its urgency], but also at least part of the essence of Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries’ Massive Change premise, which challenges our preconceptions about design by reminding us that “…it is not about the world of design; but about the design of the world.”

The article in question celebrates the transition of design from a noun to a verb, automatically expanding its scope: “Beyond improving the living rooms of those for whom Design is already within reach, design will improve the lives of every person on Earth.” Crazy but possible, as Massive Change suggests through revisiting old and new disciplines, re-framing [or un-framing] them within the paradigm of economies awaiting for design solutions.

Design as a vehicle for change. Dramatic, massive, even elegant change.

Take Information Technology [IT] as an example; viewed through the lens of "Information Economies," analysts can appreciate a different set of mechanics as well as a variety of new roles for their actors: Geeks writing code suddenly become lawmakers as Stanford’s Lawrence Lessig explains in an interview published in Mau’s book: “In implementing and choosing the architectures that will define cyberspace, you’re implementing and choosing certain architectures to enable or disable values. So you’re making political choices. What’s troubling is when these political choices are made by entities that aren’t responsible publicly; we then begin to worry about the extent to which this kind of private lawmaking defeat public values.”

Design can have a deep impact on Information Economies simply by helping us better understand the complexities of a world that literally speaks its own language. The development of a global interface that makes understanding and interacting with the world of IT accessible to the majority is essential to the future of democracy in an information-driven society.

The case of IT as one of the many realms that fit within Information Economies is probably a bit more obvious than some of the others touched by Massive Change [and by GOOD’s feature which introduces a simple, yet thought-provoking lingo to review design], anything from Urban Economies to Living Economies, or Image Economies to Military Economies, can indeed be influenced by the good thinking that lives at the core of Design.

Posted by camilo at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Culture’s byproduct is generally documented as history and confined to the realm of expert historians, at least when its formally packaged [think of the history book, photo essay, and the like]. As digital and analogue spaces mingle, the documentation of culture and its derivatives is mutating alongside the encyclopedia, video, and personal communications, just to name a few recently-shaken realms.

Two seemingly unrelated trends might help us see how digitally connected citizens are rethinking history influenced by [or influencing?] remix culture: New York City’s “urban explorers” and Tokyo’s “trial observation maniacs.”

The New York Times article Children of Darkness thoroughly discusses the concept of “urban explorers,” a term that can probably be best defined by Steve Duncan’s [an explorer himself] self-description as a “guerrilla historian.” These folks are devoted to “plumb tunnels, trestles and other abandoned places, often illicitly, and in those shadow cities find the pulsing center of New York.”

Graffiti artists have traditionally conquered the darkest and deepest corners of the city with the goal of creative intervention; urban explorers are focused on their discovery through documentation, generally producing a body of work that facilitates our understanding of the urban landscape and its history as a multi-layered territory, blurring fact with fiction... like history books.

In contrast, “trial observation” operates on the surface. According to a Monocle article, members of trial clubs find “their greatest pleasure” in watching “the slowly grinding wheels of Japanese justice,” documenting their experience in blogs following their own particular format, as another article in The Japan Times explains: “They are meticulous in their entries, recording serious yet funny exchanges heard in court, as well as describing the fashions and facial expressions of the protagonists.” One group, the Kasumikko Club, “have already published two books about their hobby, including The Kasumikko Club’s Guide to Trial Observation.”

The documentation of trials by “girls ‘who dress up to go to court in the afternoon, listen to hard-hitting cases and talk about love at the Art Coffee Shop in Kasumigaseki Station’,” can sometimes feel more like fiction and perhaps even more human than the standard news report. By taking court journalism in their own hands, the club is discovering new layers of society in the same fashion that New York’s urban explorers make us aware of an alien landscape right in front of us.

Both trial maniacs and guerrilla historians draw from the results of past and present cultural interactions to take its subjects to another realm: The trial becomes a fiction/diary/daytime TV hybrid while an abandoned urban space can equally be the subject of a National Geographic feature as well as of a highbrow art show.

Posted by camilo at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)