Designing for the long now
As advancement in technology pushes us forth in the direction of envisioning efficient futures, a question emerges; whether in this idea of constantly looking forward do we forget to look back? What can this mean for designers who are responsible for co-creating better futures and is there merit in investigating where we come from in order to design for where we need to go?
Before we launch into this notion of forward and backward thinking, it becomes important to expand our sense of time, especially at a point where most of us only tend to think of the present. Socialist, Elise Boulding writes about the notion of expanding our perspective of time, in a way that the present moment becomes elastic, linking back to the past which has shaped it, and to the future where its ramifications may be felt. In her opinion, to understand any moment in its current point of time, it must be expanded to 100 years before and after it, in turn, building on a 200-year now.
As designers designing in a world of wicked problems, we are slowly becoming aware of this future and the possibilities it holds and rightly so. However, what goes unnoticed is the relevance of our history on our present and our future. Through this piece, I would like to build forth an understanding on why the past should become a considered design material and why a deeper understanding and research of the past is required to design these holistic, inclusive and sustainable futures.
Understanding causes rather than resolving effects
As we look towards design to solve some of our deeply rooted social issues, a lack of knowledge towards where these issues stem from can drive us to alleviate symptoms rather than tackle root causes. To understand history is to understand this cause and effect relationship. In understanding history, we can trace back these problems to their root causes, to a considered sense of reality which has occurred in order to solve them and their resulting effects.
The predictive analysis algorithm and the concerns around algorithmic biases of the Allegheny Family Screening Tool serves as an example of why a more nuanced understanding of root causes is important. As the tool predicts and solves cases of possible child neglect using historical data of families in the county, what needs to be asked is whether child neglect is a symptom of the problem of poverty and what can we learn from a history of institutionalized poverty and discrimination in our societies to try and alleviate the cause as well as its effects. Who does this history oppress and who does it benefit? Till we don’t answer these larger fundamental questions, the debate of algorithmic biases remains unresolved.
Kate Crawford of AI Now Institute paves way for a pertinent thought on how data itself is representative of human history and why this issue of bias needs to be seen as a socio-technical problem and till we don’t understand this history of systemised biases, we will continue to plague our digital technologies and our worlds with it.
Learning from best practices
As designers move towards designing for different communities, it becomes important to consider the idea of a better future not as something which is necessarily new, modern or high-tech but as something which incorporates within it existing knowledge and practices of communities. As we design for things which are meant to work for the present as well as the future to come, certain older practices, designs, and infrastructures become an interesting point of inspiration especially when looking at what was conceptualized in the past but still sustains itself successfully in the present. For designers, histories of our own disciplines as well histories of communities we work with it, hold within them rich ideas which can be put to practice in meaningful and innovative ways.
One such example is of Aymara women whose traditional weaving skills are now being added to a medical device; Nit Occlud which is used to cover holes in the hearts of newborn babies. These plugs are so small that they can’t be mass manufactured but are now being successfully made by the indigenous craft knitters of Bolivia.
The better we understand these histories, the more solid knowledge base we make for these decisions we make, the Nit-Occlud provides a good case and point for inventions where re-purposing and re-vitalizing can hold more value than re-designing.
Building pluralistic renditions of history
Looking back into the past isn’t limited to learning from its successes and failures but may also require us to redefine these histories in the process. Often the past gets shadowed by the one popular version of history, however, a pluralist approach to understanding this history is what is required to build on an inclusive future based in the knowledge of different communities, their cultures, and their identities.
The talks on decolonising design provide an interesting pathway to consider in this regard. Ahmed Ansari, speaks of a need to for designers to produce alternative systems as they attempt to steer away from established westernized structures and for the need to re-establish our links with our shared histories in order to make sense of who we are and where we are going.
This idea of looking back requires us designers coming from colonialised contexts to question and be aware of the histories that have been handed over to us in order to design in our own unique contexts while being responsible for the voices we come to represent.
“You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.”
- Maya Angelou
The path to the future is deeply rooted in our pasts. Equipped with the knowledge of history, we can come to a position to learn from its successes and failures, and at the same time consider ways of proposing counter histories which define our collective identities.
Building on Einstein’s space-time system, perhaps what we need before we begin to design is some sort of time travel, traveling backward first in history to understand its many nuances, so that we can learn from it, and then forward into the future to understand its ramifications so that we can design for it.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMym_BKWQzk
