“To think of artefacts in terms of design means conceiving of them less and less as modernist objects, and conceiving of them more and more as “things”
Bruno Latour,
Last week I read again the text of a lecture given by Bruno Latour in 2008 at the Networks of Design conference. Latour focused on the importance of design and explored some of its implications in order to characterize a theory of action. He connected his views on design with his own work on Networks (Actor Network Theory) as well as to Peter Sloterdijk’s notion of “Spheres”. Latour’s conference was entitled “The Cautionary Prometheus”, at the same time pointing to the transformative nature of design and its differences with the hyperhero of Modernity, Illustration, Science and Engineering (don’t forget that the title of Mary Schelley’s book is “Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus”). Latour introduces a very interesting distinction between (modernist) objects and the emergence of a very different type of entity through design: “things”.
If things, or rather Dinge, are gatherings, as Heidegger used to define them, then it is a short step from there to considering all things as the result of an activity called “collaborative design” in Scandinavia.
How did he reach this conclusion? First, he remarked five characteristics of design (or, as he called them, “advantages”):
1. Humility: Design seems to be close to arts and crafts, to skills rather than to grandiose approaches of big, modern projects. Thus, it lacks radicality when confronted with other endeavours.
As a concept, design implies a humility that seems absent from the word “construction” or “building”. Because of its historical roots as a mere addition to the “real” practicality, sturdy materiality and functions of daily objects, there is always some modesty in claiming to design something anew. In design there is nothing foundational. It seems to me that to say you plan to design something, does not carry the same risk of hubris as saying one is going to build something. Introducing Prometheus to some other hero of the past as a “designer” would doubtlessly have angered him. Thus, the expansion of the word “design” is an indication (a weak one to be sure) of what could be called a post Promethean theory of action. This theory of action has arisen just at the moment (this is its really interesting feature) when every single thing, every detail of our daily existence, from the way we produce food, to the way we travel, build cars or houses, clone cows, etc is to be, well, redesigned.
This is something I am not so sure about. I cannot see Bauhaus or the Soviet Constructivists as mild non-revolutionaries. they were designers and used design to try to bring about radical change.
2. Attention to detail.To the contrary, a careful attention to detail, craft and skill, was precisely what seemed reactionary as this would only have slowed the swift march to progress. The expanding concept of design indicates a deep shift in our emotional make up: at the very moment when the scale of what has to be remade has become infinitely larger (no political revolutionary committed to challenging capitalist modes of production has ever considered redesigning the earth’s climate), what means to “make” something is also being deeply modified. The modification is so deep that things are no longer “made” or “fabricated”, but rather carefully “designed”, and if I may use the term, precautionarily designed. It is as though we had to combine the engineering tradition with the precautionary principle; it is as though we had to imagine Prometheus stealing fire from heaven in a cautious way! What is clear is that at this very historical juncture, two absolutely foreign sets of passions (foreign for the modernist ethos that is) are having to be recombined and reconciled.
3. Semiotics: designed objects become more a more a mix of symbol and function in a very literal sense.
Artefacts are becoming conceivable as complex assemblies of contradictory issues. The transformation of objects into signs has been greatly accelerated by the spread of computers. It is obvious that digitalization has done a lot to expand semiotics to the core of objectivity: when almost every feature of digitalized artefacts is “written down” in codes and software[...]. If Galileo’s book of nature was written in mathematical terms, [...], this expansion is even truer today when more and more elements of our surroundings are literally and not metaphorically written down in mathematical (or at least in computer) terms. Although the old dichotomy between function and form could be vaguely maintained for a hammer, a locomotive or a chair, it is ridiculous when applied to a mobile phone. Where would you draw the line between form and function? The artefact is composed of writings all the way down! But this is not only true of computerized artefacts and gadgets. It is also true of good old-fashioned materiality: what are nano- or bio-technologies if not the expansion of design to another level? Those who can make individual atoms write the letters “IBM”, those who implant copyright tags into DNA, or who devise nano cars which “race” on four wheels, would certainly consider themselves to be designers. Here again, matter is absorbed into meaning (or rather as contested meaning) in a more and more intimate fashion.
4. Design as a remedial practice: according to Latour, all design is redesign (something I don’t completely agree, by the way). Latour identifies this as a healthy stand since it spares excursions into creationist temptations, undermining, for example, arguments that use design in a very warped way as is the case with the proponents of Intelligent Design.
There is always something that exists first as a given, as an issue, as a problem. In other words, there is always something remedial in design. This split is a weakness to be sure ([...] but it is also an immense advantage when compared to the idea of creation. To design is never to create ex nihilo. [...] things are never created but rather carefully and modestly redesigned. [...] Designing is the antidote to founding, colonizing, establishing, or breaking with the past. It is an antidote to hubris and to the search for absolute certainty, absolute beginnings, and radical departures.
5. Design is an ethical practice:
Design is that it necessarily involves an ethical dimension which is tied into the obvious question of good versus bad design. But it is easy to understand that when you say that something has been “designed”, you are not only authorized but forced to ask whether it has been well or badly designed. The spread of design to the inner definitions of things carries with it, not only meaning and hermeneutics, but also morality. More exactly, it is as if materiality and morality were finally coalescing. [...] this normative dimension that is intrinsic to design offers a good handle from which to extend the question of design to politics. A politics of matters of facts and of objects has always seemed far fetched; a politics of designed things and issues is somewhat more obvious.
This reminds me of some very practical consequences. For example, some of the chaotic and (bad) behaviour that we suffered during the recent financial crisis was designed into the software used by the financial brokers. One can argue that this is a case of (ethically) bad design. As my good friend Daniel Beunza, currently at the London School of Economics, says “Morality is in the machine”.
Why I blog this?
This made me think about the new types of “objects” that are the result of digitization: mixed accumulations of actions and infrastructure, software. etc. which require a thorough an sensitive knowledge of design, people, relations. It also demands the ability to sustain a lot of discussion and negotiation over meaning as well as what good and bad design entail. Maybe it is training people in designing this type of "invisible things" that is crucial if widespread social innovation based on digital concepts is ever to take off.
It also reminded me of the disproportionate place that the object has in reflections about design. Not surprisingly, a recent documentary about design and designers is entitled "Objectified"! (a very worthwhile film, by the way).
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