Transdisciplinary Design

Design For A Change

Posted on October 25, 2012 | posted by:

 

Many traits of human intelligence, such as knowledge, empathy,rational thought, theory of mind, rituals, language and the use of symbols and tools, have shaped through experience. Humans today evolved through intelligence. Since our traits have changed through time, our ways of living in the nature changed.  We build houses to protect ourselves, we made clothes to cover, we build tools and weapons to catch our food. Ever since, we strive to make our lives, surroundings and lifestyles better. These efforts and results obtained; with increased experiences, accumulated scientific data and the advances in the technological infrastructure, address wider audience with each new step that is taken; and inevitably has become more complex.

We live in an artificial world. Herbert Simon explains the word artificial as man-made as opposed to natural. Today, we as humans have to live in an artificial world in order to survive. However somewhere  between technological developments -especially- in mass communication, urbanization and growing population have affected structures and functions of institutions and their interpersonal relations within; creating complex systems that lead to “artificial societies” that we are unable to fully comprehend.

Technology has changed our behaviors, our way of communicating, learning, shopping, traveling. But we need to understand that we changed our behaviors ourselves. As John Thackara describes in the book in his book In The Bubble “ technology has not come from an outside society, we made it. Technology is a product of human decisions and actions. These actions may have been misguided or based on assumptions that we are now beginning to question-but they were not accident”.

Non of our actions are without consequences. Most of the time we don’t think of the consequences of our actions, even if we know them very well. But no matter how we act, we make realities.

We need systems in which automation and technology would be integrated into the overall design where we can experiment ways of shifting our perspective ahead to get a better understanding of the present and make better decisions, through establishing a lifestyle which enables us to experience preconditions and consequence of life. It can happen when man asserts himself in objective nature and relates it to himself.

There is a choice that we are making, it is our decision how to use what we have today. We have to really understand the problems we are facing and the reasons for it in order to solve them correctly. which can only occur on a large enough scale if our systems of production, construction, communication,  and distribution are fundamentally redesigned.