I have been wondering how we as designers can look into the future. Or rather, how can we see the consequences of our actions and forecast what what effect they may have in the future; before we carry out our actions. Surely, this must be an ethical obligation we owe to the future.
How can we look into the future? Well this is one of those unanswerable questions that we face, and how we view the future has always been a mystery. Well it kind of was a mystery, till quite recently.
A hint of how we could understand the future came when I read two books by the psychologist Robert Ornstein. These were; The Axemaker’s Gift, that describes how at every stage of human history we have developed sequential and analytical processes, in order to develop tools (such as an axe) and as such have pushed into the background our intuitive and creative knowledge. The other book, was the Evolution of Consciousness, that delineates how the human brain was not designed, rather how it developed from a reptilian, to mammal. In other words, our brain developed in order to adapt to the immediate needs of our animal world around, and still does.
The scenario I drew up to explain the findings of these two books for myself is; when faced by a tiger in the jungle, our animal brain does not enter into logical and sequential thinking. Rather, we react and run for our lives. Yet, when faced by the slow degradation of our environment our animal brain is not able to react and instead puts off the recognition of our imminent destruction.
So maybe as designers we can find ways to look long term consequences of actions (since we have produced much of the crap that is choking up the earth). Maybe, we can see through the the life-cycle of our designs or the ‘social life-cycles’ of the objects of design?
What do you think?
For reference see:
http://www.robertornstein.com
http://ishkbooks.com/books/AXGI1.html
