Technologies and Our Own Humanity
I was sitting down with a group of people discussing topics of gender roles and societal values Thursday night, and it struck me: the physicality of our setting is what makes our connection so fundamental, and our experiences so relevant. I imagined, on a personal level, how that would have been perceived if I were “immersing in” with the group on a virtual universe — as progressed as it would get — where the perception of reality would still be divorced from digital world in my conscience.
We spoke in our seminar about VR (and tech in general) having the ability to give constant feedback, and provide the opportunity of ‘presence’ as opposed to mere communication — its most commonly used method today by practitioners. My colleague, Maria, spoke about a compelling idea in AR of providing moments of change with a reality as datum, which I found interesting.
We didn’t only speak of VR (although it dominated the conversation), our discussion revolved around Visualization, Urban Simulation, and emergent technologies. Carlo Ratti emphasized there was a common characteristic within these technologies in that they deal with providing feedback loop to users.
My very passionate colleague (who I was deliberately posing ideas s/he would disagree with for my own curiosity and, well, for fun) firmly stated we cannot reach that level of supremacy in design because we do not have enough data. The debate kept going, but to summarize, it was apparent there was no ultimatum. Nature and, us being part of it, are continuously mutating and evolving. As such, it keeps adapting to find some sort of balance, when the CO2 levels increase, for example, Earth changes in a way to find a balance to the new disturbance in the ecosystem, and the process continues.
There is a reason most planes, as Carlo explained, have a similar shape and that is they are designed for one purpose: the function of flying. When one gathers most data to achieve for a singular activity, s/he does end up towards less diversity in designing for that problem. However, cities’ needs and aspirations continuously morph, changing the approach to designing for them and in them, or that is at least how I understood it.
Out of this discussion, perhaps I was most fascinated by the word “design” in different languages and their contextual references. In Mandarin the word translates to strategy-making, which in many ways is reflective of the recent urban growth of the region — pragmatic, planned, and strategy-based urban design/growth. I found that really fascinating, because I never thought about “tasmeem” or design in Arabic and its derivation, the word “sameem” (صميم) translates to the core, and “tasmeem” is the act of [one’s core]. I am starting to investigate the poetics of the term’s meaning and how cities in Arabia have related to that expression in their urban morphological evolution.
There are many potential drawbacks to these technologies, but as an advocate of their possibilities, I focused on some ideas that I found myself passionate about. Most importantly when thinking about technology and design, in my mind, is the humanity that I must maintain, once that is somehow dismissed for some ‘supposed’ betterment for humans, I think at that stage we missed the point.
