|
Design and Purpopse
By Stephen Gay
The exploration of understanding is rooted in teleology; the study of purpose. In being, we must understand purpose or the question, why. This notion of purpose equally applies to industrial design. When asked to understand the role of context in form-giving as found in everyday objects is to ask what is being for a designer.
If we are to understand purpose for everyday objects, then we must look to ourselves for the answers. History often offers solutions while the present offers opportunities.
Evolution as a first step
Evolution is defined as the process by which something develops gradually into a different form. On a global scale, evolution is driven by our anthropological understanding of nature. Although living things change biologically, it is only the human species that can constitute the essence of humanity.
History describes the human species' adaptation to nature. From living in caves and cooking with fire, human beings continue to evolve, living as they now do in air-conditioned environments with electric food preparation and a myriad of other artificial devices. The changes encountered are experienced as 'new,' an occurrence brought about by evolution, still driven by human beings and nature but more and more by technology.
In fact, the ratio of intervention between human beings, nature and technology in the evolutionary process is changing. More that ever, technology is affecting our sense of ourselves and, unintentionally, communicating with the desires our sub-conscience. (See Figure A)
| Nature | Human | Techology |
| Primitive Culture | 69 % | 26 % | 5 % |
| Middle Ages | 34 % | 52 % | 14 % |
| Post Industry | 9 % | 25 % | 66 % |
| Today | 6 % | 26 % | 68 % |
Figure A: White Noise percentages from Source
The Impact of Technology
Technology has an incredible impact on our senses, and not only visually but audibly as well. Humans may be able to close their eyes to technology, but we don't have ear lids!
Through creativity, ingenuity and knowledge the human species has evolved and has changed its surroundings. Fire might have fallen from the sky, but electricity, super-computers and the automobile, were conceived using mankindÕs creative and thinking abilities. These are common examples of new.
Technology, Value and Ethics
Human beings have struggled to evolve a civilization with a value order (standards or principles considered important to life), and an ethical order (concerned with the goodness and badness of human character when compared to the behaviour of the community as whole). For example, electric ovens are an improvement on fire. The object itself had no being without purpose. In the end, it is the value that we give to on objects that ultimately creates its purpose.
Ethical order is much the same. Murder is a extreme manifestation of bad human characteristic. So are jealousy, greed, and hatred. These are negative ethics orders. However, these orders have no hierarchy. The orders of ethics and value overrule each other given varying context of the situation. (See Figure B; the structure of ethics and value order with regards to a common model)
| Question | Value Order | Ethics Order | Solution |
| Take the Car to Work Today? | Time Cost Weather Comfort | Environmental Hippocratic Health Family | Take the Car to Work Today. Or Not? |
Figure B: Value and Ethics Order
A Sense of Order
As history unfolds it reveals the new, which is integrally linked to the process of evolution. The ethics order suggests that human beings, who are progressing forward through time, are improving by evolving because the ethics order redefines evolution as process which considers whether or not the new is good.
For example, the capitalistic way suggests progression. New, better, bigger always translates to good. This sense of good is part of the order, and orders are created by human beings, not by nature. Moreover, we create order to define purpose of ones being. Add to this phenomenon our ability to adapt over generations and we arrive at some fundamental questions: why change? why evolve?
Part of the answer can be found in how evolution progresses linearly through time. In this process, we as individuals move from the past to the present, dragging history behind us. And it is this evolution that brings about the new, and new is considered good in the value order.
Technology and Order
Technology, as defined from the Greek word techne, means craft. Technology evolved from human beings, and was created from evolution with purpose and being of craft.
For centuries philosophy taught that technology had four causes: (1) the causa materialis, the material, the matter out of which, for example, a silver chalice is made; (2) the causa formalis, the form, the shape into which the material enters; (3) the causa finalis, the end, for example, the sacrificial rite in relation to which the chalice required is determined as to its form and matter; (4) the causa efficiens, which brings about the effect that is finished actual chalice, in this instance, the silversmith.1
Heidegger stated that, "What technology is, when represented as a means, discloses itself when we trace instrumentality back to fourfold causality." Heidegger alluded that technology needed a purpose, and, to exist, it needed a physical manifestation. That purpose lies in value, and is determined by human beings.
The above example follows from Aristotle. All objects that manifest into existence need not only be material cause and formal cause, but also agency and finally purpose as the causa efficiens. The role of context in form-giving as found in everyday objects is determined by these causalities, where purpose (causa efficiens) is the final cause.
Technology and New
Value states new is good. For the causality or purpose of technology to exist is to have value. This value is again rooted in human beings. To maintain this value, technology must evolve and change constitutes new.
Grant speaks of novelties or newness in the context of our world. He states, "...the novelties of that destiny lie before us in every lived moment." To expand the new or novelty is defined as the strange and unfamiliar. This is to say that this evolution of new is part of us, and exists because we exist. Grant reaffirms the creative and ingenious qualities of human beings which bring about new. Additionally he states that the causa efficiens and causa finalis of new is found in that which we create as new according to our purpose.
Most of us represent that novelty to ourselves as a great step forward in the systematic application of reason to the invention of instruments for our disposal. From their beginnings human beings have developed instruments to help them get things done (indeed, human beings are seen as different from other animals because of our capacity to make tools) the word instrument is not confined simply to external objects such as machines or drugs or hydro power, but includes such development of systems or organizations and communication as bureaucracies and factories. Technology is then thought of as the whole apparatus of instruments made by man and placed at the disposal of man for his choice and purpose.
Technology and Evolution
Technology is evolving quickly and the interest in development is high, because the value technology offers is new. This rapidly changing technology offers products and concepts which are desirable, and supposedly adds value. It is these desirable beings (of technology) which interest us. They promise evolution, and an improvement on the quality of life. Do we desire things because we define them as good, or do we define them as good because we desire them? The value of good helps to evolve technology.
Billions of dollars are spent every year on research and development. These resources make possible the evolution of technology. The cycle of existence that desires the new promotes an interest in technology which consequently evolves technology by creating new once again. (See Figure C)
Figure C
But how does this help humanity, especially if the value in new is not be as good or as valuable as hoped. Technology and products may change humanity but to what end. Neil Postman states:
"Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean 'ecological' in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillar from a given habitat, you are left not with the same environment minus caterpillars; you have a new environment and you have constituted the conditions of survival. In the year 1500, fifty years after the printing press was invented, we did not have old Europe plus the printing press. We had a different Europe. After television, the United States was not America plus television; television gave a new colouration to every political campaign, to every home, to every school, to every church, to every industry."
Postman, explains that new is not necessarily good, but that new brings about evolution. The purpose is not in the value of good; the essence is change for the sake of new. The process describes that there is not an inherently objective human value in new; it is that, in evolution, we do not necessarily improve ourselves and our environment.
Technology and Tomorrow
When technology brings about new, changes affect humanity. The realization is that the face value of new can blind us to its purpose. The invention of the automobile serves as a good illustration. When initially introduced, the concepts was that man could get from point A to point B faster with car than with a horse,. At the time, some individuals might have been concerned for the blacksmiths or the stable keepers who would lose their jobs. But these considerations could be perceived as irrelevant because they were not part of a holistic view. The fact is that the car ultimately changed the planet. The automobile changed the family, work and leisure lifestyle. It created the super highways, suburban neighbourhoods, oil spills, the Gulf war, and global warming, as well as getting from A to B.
Referring to the causalities of being with regards to the creation and evolution of technology, technology needs not only purpose but, it needs humanity to conceive it. Furthermore, technology finds its conception strongly rooted in design and engineering,. At this point we must make the ultimate value and ethic choice for our survival: to conceive or to abort technology? The rational explanation for this decision is always to be grounded in purpose. Purpose automatically determines what for and why?
Unfortunately, the growing trend in technology is to determine how. How can we improve? How can we do it quickly? How many more can we produce? How much more can we make? The how could be a development in a new technique for construction or an assignment a teacher gives to a student. The fact is new, and already has a purpose: to make money or to get a grade. The question of why is generally overlooked, since purpose already exists.
Purpose has to be deeper than self interest, because humanity is not a set of individual but a human collectivity. For the industrial designer, designing for the good of the most is not the same as good for all, because every change of new to society constitutes a 'new society.' Realizing that the introduction of any being changes us, it also make sense to determine why, i.e., to conceive or perpetuate technology. Technology has an incredible influence on society and on the individual. The hope is that we will change because of our imperatives and not those of technology.
Footer Notes
Heidegger, Martin, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Harper and Row, New York, 1977
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Reason in the Age of Science, MIT Press, London, 1992
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and other Essays, Random House, New York, 1955
Grant, George, Technology and Justice, House of Anansi Press Limited, Concord, 1986
Postman, Niel, Technopoly, Vintage Books and Random House, New York, 1993
http://www-home.calumet.yorku.ca/pkelly/
www/critp.html
About the Author
Stephen Gay is a gifted design professional, who has worked closely with many high profile companies including Motorola, Prudential, Sapient and HannaHodge. His skill set and services include design management, information architecture, interface design, graphic/icon design, and usability testing. Through his real world experience and his deep passion for innovation in design, he utilizes his expertise to solve complex business problems related to technology and usability. For further information, you may visit Stephen at his website at www.stephengay.com.
|
