Enchanted Objects （Part 1 & 2）
Do you want a replenishing purse that constantly pours forth money? Or a pair of boot that enable you to run tirelessly? Or a carpet that can fly? If you say yes to one of these, well~welcome to the world of Enchanted Objects created by David Rose.
David Rose, a M.I.T Media Lab researcher and also an award-winning entrepreneur, provides us his own blueprint for a better future of human beings in this book called Enchanted Objects.
At the beginning of this book, David leads us onto four possible trajectories of future technology — — Terminal World(The domination of screens), Prosthetics(The wearable technology that could amplify people’s powers), Animism(Social robots that could understand human beings better), and Enchanted objects(everyday things, like a pen, a wallet, a lightbulb, that are enhanced by fusing with emerging technologies). These four are transitional and could influence, infiltrate into each other.
Well, actually, we are living in a world dominated by black glass slabs now, maybe because some inventors take screens for granted and refuse to take time to develop a new way of interacting. It seems that screens are the only platforms that we could use to interact with technology and the worst part is the speed of screen’s proliferation seems unstoppable, just like cancer cells’.
Unlike people taking advantage of the domination of screens, David didn’t want this kind of black glass slab to gobble up all the interacting possibilities and wished to change the situation and do something fancier. So he decided to devote himself to the fourth technology trajectory: Enchanted objects.
“The Terminal World asserts a cold, blue aesthetic into our world, rather than responding to our own” “the Terminal World does not care about enchantment. The smart phone does not have a predecessor in our folklore and fairy tales. There is no magic device I know of whose possesser stares zombielike into it, playing a meaningless game, or texting about nothing. It does not fulfill a deep fundamental human desire in an enchanting way.”
In Part Two, David not so much shows us six fundamental human drives as indicates six vital elements that a designer should think about when getting to create a product, since a terrific product should satisfy human psychological needs:
- Omniscience: To have great knowledge of everthing
- Telepathy: To connect deeply with others
- Safekeeping: Protection from all harm
- Immortality: A long and healthy life
- Teleportation: Friction-Free travel
- Expression: The desire to express ourselves
Reaction
Basically, Enchanted Objects provides many fascinating idea and offers people fun ways of thinking about technology and looking into future. Moreover, it’s really interesting to see technologies from the lenses of humanity and I have to say that plenty of examples David used to support his point in these two parts could be very imagination-provoking to all the designers.
However, after reading these two parts of the book, I still get a little bit confused. Take the first chapter(Terminal World: The Domination of Glass Slabs) for example. In this chapter, David states why screens rule the world, what companies do under this kind of circumstance , how ubiquitous screens are in our life, and a little bit gripe with black-slab incrementalism. As a reader, I think I would be more interested in why David would think screens fall short and compelling reasons of it and what would happen if we continue living in the Terminal World, rather than a large portion of how screen is a blunt instrument and how short-sighted these companies are to keep produce screens. Moreover, some chapters are full of examples of David and his students’ projects and keep repeating “I made this”, “I made that”. I do appreciate he uses these evidences to support his idea, but I don’t like a pile of examples talking about the same thing. In a word, this book might not aptly illustrated.
Given the content of 143 pages, I think David is trying to convey the following point:
What makes enchanted objects so appealing is because fused seamlessly with technologies, these objects have extra capabilities to provide more relevant information, but the nature of the object isn’t compromised so that when people have some the-object-related problems, they would resort to these objects which always stay there and are available for people to use. Comparing to Screen-based products, enchanted objects would not be interruptive and not bring a deluge of useless information.
I am thinking, to some extent, maybe the popularization of enchanted objects would heal addiction issues that cell phones currently have, since information is embedded in everyday objects that are around you all day long, which enables you to find the answers everywhere. You don’t need to worry about lack of info and thus take the cell phone every place you go!
