Design is how we build our world, from the most intimate effects on our bodies, to the consequences for our communities, to the reactions of our ecosystems.
How we design and why we design shapes our tools which in turn shapes who we are and who we can be.
Our tech revolution has happened so quickly that many ramifications of our most creative designs were untested on humans, on our communities and on our ecosystems.
But now many voices are calling for more holistic and healthy design principles to guide our work. The questions, approaches and issues raised in this class will ensure that your creative designs capture your true values for the kind of world you want to create.
We will be using Permaculture Ethics and Design Principles, as they follow the millennia-old design patterns found in thriving ecosystems.
Permaculture Ethics: Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share
In this first section, we explore the impact of our tech design choices on people. specifically the human body. Marshall McLuhan, a celebrated New Media thinker claims that humans experience technology as extensions of our bodies, and as one part may be augmented by a specific technology, another is typically amputated. Being aware of this trade-off is critical for good design and for humane technology.
I’m a tech exceptionalist because I believe that getting tech right matters and that getting it wrong will be an unmitigated catastrophe — and doing it right can give us the power to work together to save our civilization, our species, and our planet.
—Cory Doctorow
“the Internet has changed the way we make decisions. More and more, it is not individual humans who decide but an entangled, adaptive network of humans and machines.” ( Brockman 21)
The climate crisis requires a serious and sustained response from across civil society, and that includes the tech sector and technology professionals. ClimateAction.tech’s purpose is to empower technology professionals to play our part — to meet, discuss, learn and take climate action. Our vision is that everyone is working on the climate crisis at all levels, and together we are driving industry and society toward a sustainable future. —climate action.tech/about
https://youtu.be/Zv4MneVLVeQ
In the first section, People Care Design, we explored the issue that emerged when a Google design ethicist, Tristan Harris created a presentation entitled “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention” to address his concerns about the negative impact of the attention economy as a business/tech model. We explored the consequences of hasty or unhealthy design on people’s physical and mental health.
In this next section, our goal is to consider Fair Share Design. In other words, how can we make sure our digital tech supports diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In evaluating the designs we use, or in creating our own designs, can we help create better families, communities and cultures with a fundamental ethic of fairness?
(because of Fall break)
In this third and final section, we will examine the impacts of digital technology on the earth’s ecosystems, with a focus on climate crisis. Since all economies are really ecologies in the sense that they are ways to allocate the natural resources that sustain life, the economies that surround our tech are critical to its effects on our ecosystems–local and global. See also This Changes Everything. Learn how to get a Climate Tech job.
For some interesting Eco/Tech Solution , SolarPunk Video:
No Lab this week
