Assisted Emergence
Ubiquity within Innovation
This is a period in time in which technology has been brought to a milestone of innovation. It has become a trend within all tech industries to make hardware and software more accessible to a wider audiences. No where
has this been more explicit then website creation, and the ever growing ensemble of the WYSIWYG; like square space, wix, wordpress, and adobe muse. This is partly accomplished by the artificial intelligence movement
of the past decade.
For website creation UI/UX are beginning to be automated by simplified composition systems. Modular structured systems that will place and align all content in a strong and concise way. The systems themselves are a bit templated in that it gives the user less control of the form, and more focus on content; stream lining the design.
This is one of many verticals within Design and Technology to see an enhancement. We see interfaces, vehicles, platforms, devices which are all beginning to go a new way. Technology taking on a new form in which enhances the user . Machine learning, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and the even the oncoming evolution to the user interface. Adding the user experience, these are all part of the evolving prostheses.
These are all apart of a movement I call Assisted Emergence. Moore’s Law states that hardware capability every year gets denser in number, and more miniature thus accelerating performance of said hardware. Concurrently technology as an extension to the self. Is beginning to expedite us and therefore industry as well.
As a notable example; 5 Years ago marked the North American craze of the single creator indie team creating ‘triple A’ like quality video games; in lieu of our Japanese predecessors; who have been doing this for awhile. The creator Dean Dodrill; animator, and self taught game designer; created Dust: An Elysian Tail. Fast forward to now; single creator indie video games have not only achieved nuanced graphics, but we are now inventing complex systems because said technological obstacles are being circumvented by the technology.
As a designer and educator I feel we should be wary of what technology
is doing to the social environment. We’ve already been through this historically with what has happened to graphic design, the letter press,
and the innovation of the computer. It was the death and rebirth of typefaces. Typography and fonts were more semiotically aligned with their creators. Certain typefaces could only be used within context of certain ideals
and fervor.
Furthermore I feel we are also losing ourselves to the power of our systems. Within programming; new gaming engines are giving the user more agency. The ability to create an experience without fully understanding the fundamentals of code, and optimization. It’s the era of black box sorcery one could say. Which is not a bad thing. Culture tends to stay more based on form and aesthetics, when adhering to any medium.
But I digress. My ideals don’t really genuflect to the elitists of design and code, but I do make sure to understand their awareness. We are bringing up the next generation of students who are learning to code and design at very young age. Form over function is a young person's game. We must learn to appreciate our new mediums, and understand them in a quantitative way.
Quotes —
Fabricio Teixeira -How AI has started to impact our work as designers
Art ~ Ralph Moreau
