Even if we don’t want, our brain will start grouping patterns, and it is very difficult to change each persons’ personal stereotypes no matter how much of that might be a myth in reality. This happens mainly because change is seen as a threat to survival, and the risk involved in diverting from an established survival pattern. The information we carry in many cases needs referencing and collaboration to validate its authenticity, because in most cases we do not personally experience them. For example I didn’t see India getting independence on 15th August 1947, but I believe in it through a system of historical validation by people who personally experienced it, which doesn’t make the incident a myth, but a real event of consequence.
The roots of these myths are formed through information around us. Information is experienced through all our five senses, which maintains our consciousness, and thereby confirms our existence. They are therefore crucial in building an absolute sense of reality around us. Everything around us is information, and the brain through a process of systematic and complex codification understands this information.
Every code has an encoding and decoding system, which we have learnt through a stimulus-response process of imitation, repetition and error. This selection and rejection process leads each individual being subject to a different set of individual codes, and this results in all of us developing our own unique belief systems.
A belief system is what balances the meanings and proportions of rationality, humanism, ethics, morals, aesthetics and other abstract values within us. They are so rigid that challenging them proves severely detrimental to our emotional sanity and cognition stability. That does not mean that they shouldn’t be challenged, provided there is absolute conviction in the purpose for the change. Changing belief systems reshapes our entire perception of reality. However reality itself is immensely ambiguous, which is formed through our individual and communal understanding and pursuit of an absolute truth.
I guess at a macro level design is ultimately aimed at creating, increasing human convenience and efficiency. Design has historically been severely human centric at the expense of the environment. It has resulted in massive rise in consumption levels and created a ever increasing drainage of available resources to feed the artificially created markets. As a result, each design intervention, which we feel is making a major difference in the convenience levels of the end users, who are always humans, is implicitly appreciated as a successful model. Contradicting this assumption, historically there are myriad instances where convenience in one area has led to severe inconveniences in other areas, maybe not always in the short run, but in the long run. This happened because convenience or efficiency is not a constant universal truth but is again, what the majority believes in. If the context changes, so might be the convenience of the majority.
The roots of these myths are formed through information around us. Information is experienced through all our five senses, which maintains our consciousness, and thereby confirms our existence. They are therefore crucial in building an absolute sense of reality around us. Everything around us is information, and the brain through a process of systematic and complex codification understands this information.
Every code has an encoding and decoding system, which we have learnt through a stimulus-response process of imitation, repetition and error. This selection and rejection process leads each individual being subject to a different set of individual codes, and this results in all of us developing our own unique belief systems.
A belief system is what balances the meanings and proportions of rationality, humanism, ethics, morals, aesthetics and other abstract values within us. They are so rigid that challenging them proves severely detrimental to our emotional sanity and cognition stability. That does not mean that they shouldn’t be challenged, provided there is absolute conviction in the purpose for the change. Changing belief systems reshapes our entire perception of reality. However reality itself is immensely ambiguous, which is formed through our individual and communal understanding and pursuit of an absolute truth.
For example Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the solar system was the established truth, which was perceived as real, and therefore the prevalent belief system for thousands of years till the arrival of the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus in the 16th century. Copernicus's new and blasphemous heliocentric theory was published in the book, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) during the year of his death (1543), though he had arrived at his theory several decades earlier.
It redefined the notion of reality altogether, and today, after 450 years it is an established truth. In Copernicus’s case, and later Galileo’s, they faced persecution, which was a result of severe cognition dissonance faced in accepting a new theory by the church and the junta. However, we saw how truth was determined not by an absolute value but entirely by the belief systems of the majority of the population, which is not constant, and subject to changes and challenges. The same challenge to established truth values took place when Charles Darwin published his seminal book, the Origin of Species in 1859, denouncing biblical creationism and proclaiming evolution through a process of natural selection.
For me, standing on a visually flat world and arguing it is round, like what Galileo did, is nothing but a brilliant example of the lateral thought processes we humans possess, which allows us to find logic in abstraction. He did it, because he had the imagination to visualize the world from space, much before Yuri Gagarin went "up" in 1961. However, by suspending the vertical thinking system I do not mean ignoring it completely. Off course, Galileo had the rational conviction to back his idea.
The vertical thinking pattern is necessary to generate quick information based on previous knowledge, but to find new insights we should also look laterally, and seek solutions not only through arguments but also through an alternative way of looking at things, and most crucially, through imagination, which should be the strongest skill set of any designer. Gagarin witnessed one thing, which Galileo didn’t imagine, which was expressed in the following quote:
The vertical thinking pattern is necessary to generate quick information based on previous knowledge, but to find new insights we should also look laterally, and seek solutions not only through arguments but also through an alternative way of looking at things, and most crucially, through imagination, which should be the strongest skill set of any designer. Gagarin witnessed one thing, which Galileo didn’t imagine, which was expressed in the following quote:
“The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing.”
I guess at a macro level design is ultimately aimed at creating, increasing human convenience and efficiency. Design has historically been severely human centric at the expense of the environment. It has resulted in massive rise in consumption levels and created a ever increasing drainage of available resources to feed the artificially created markets. As a result, each design intervention, which we feel is making a major difference in the convenience levels of the end users, who are always humans, is implicitly appreciated as a successful model. Contradicting this assumption, historically there are myriad instances where convenience in one area has led to severe inconveniences in other areas, maybe not always in the short run, but in the long run. This happened because convenience or efficiency is not a constant universal truth but is again, what the majority believes in. If the context changes, so might be the convenience of the majority.
For example, the invention of the automobile and indeed one of the most significant inventions ever, the internal combustion engine in 1859 by Etienne Lenoir. It leapfrogged an era of alternative energy replacing animal, steam, wind and water energy sources with fuel energy. Gottlieb Daimler, Karl Benz and Henry Ford did enormous service to humanity by immediately identifying this potentiality and implementing them at a global level through mass production of automobiles and motorcycles, and perfecting the assembly lines, thereby raising new benchmarks of speed and quality.
However, a hundred years later, it is the pollution which has been created by the enormous levels of carbon dioxide emissions that has been produced in this meantime by automobiles, which is now leading to serious global warming. Within just fifty years of its invention, in 1951 Elma Wischmeir became the millionth American to die on the highway. Nowadays millions of people (between 23 to 34) are victims of road accidents caused by automobiles around the world each year. Huge amounts of metal have been mined out of the earth to meet the ever-increasing supply chains. Was all this taken into consideration at the time of the discovery of the automobile, or were this seen as minor inconveniences in the attainment of the larger goal of mobility?
However, a hundred years later, it is the pollution which has been created by the enormous levels of carbon dioxide emissions that has been produced in this meantime by automobiles, which is now leading to serious global warming. Within just fifty years of its invention, in 1951 Elma Wischmeir became the millionth American to die on the highway. Nowadays millions of people (between 23 to 34) are victims of road accidents caused by automobiles around the world each year. Huge amounts of metal have been mined out of the earth to meet the ever-increasing supply chains. Was all this taken into consideration at the time of the discovery of the automobile, or were this seen as minor inconveniences in the attainment of the larger goal of mobility?
In the case of the car, it has solved one convenience: mobility. Instead it has created havoc in multiple domains like safety, environment and resources. So where does the benefit of its invention fit in? I personally feel that each solution itself is not an end to the process but rather produces a new process itself. It is not a line but a circle, with the problem and the solution running around each other rather than being at the two ends. I feel a design solution creates a new problem or multiples of them.
Going further back, Johannes Guttenberg made the first information revolution by inventing the printing press in 1454, which created a huge global requirement for paper. Paper still forms one of the most heavily manufactured items of daily consumption worldwide, and also one of the most wasted. Although it increased literacy, record keeping and communication, it also resulted in the clearing of huge tracts of forests to supply pulp. Although it is biodegradable and recyclable, still it has created severe pressure on the tropical rainforests around the globe, endangering several species in the process.
Going further back, Johannes Guttenberg made the first information revolution by inventing the printing press in 1454, which created a huge global requirement for paper. Paper still forms one of the most heavily manufactured items of daily consumption worldwide, and also one of the most wasted. Although it increased literacy, record keeping and communication, it also resulted in the clearing of huge tracts of forests to supply pulp. Although it is biodegradable and recyclable, still it has created severe pressure on the tropical rainforests around the globe, endangering several species in the process.
Similarly the invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel in 1867 for the purpose of mining and blasting for road construction has become one of the great killers over the last century and a half. The cell-phone might have revolutionized telecommunications but it has also led to subsidiary rise in health risks, privacy, crime and terrorism. Computers might have revolutionized information accessibility and communication, but it has allowed the flourishing of pornography, cyber crime, hacking, internet fraud, and severe psychological, ergonomic and cognitive stresses.
There are many more such instances, which makes me skeptical of the real value created out of new opportunities. I feel it is very contextual and extremely relative, depending on whether we have the foresight to fully understand the consequences of its implication. I might be solving some problem in the short run, but in the long term it might have a butterfly effect which might be cataclysmic.
There are many more such instances, which makes me skeptical of the real value created out of new opportunities. I feel it is very contextual and extremely relative, depending on whether we have the foresight to fully understand the consequences of its implication. I might be solving some problem in the short run, but in the long term it might have a butterfly effect which might be cataclysmic.
Thanks for the blog Ayan,
ReplyDeleteThis sure will make me miss you less.. :)
All the best for all your efforts..
You make a difference!