For the leading economies, the combination of technologies, scientific knowledge and productivity-enhancing processes is of central importance. The emerging digital habitat feeds on that combination and that is why it is expanding. It becomes ever more evident, that the successes of this combination are now generating new problems, like overpopulation and pollution, but also controversies around concepts like "post growth" and the criticism of "transhumanism". Expansive technologies require high utilisation and the inverse is also true: high utilisation makes technologies expansive. A high number of „end“products are necessary to establish a new technological standard. Groups like business-people, technicians, engineers, and scientists have their own interests in high complexity and coping with extreme demands. These interests turn out to be special interests when the utility value of technological innovation for the population is rather low, but the design requirements of the technologies and the corresponding "challenge" of the technician and scientist increase exponentially. I am talking about the fact that until recently, nobody thought they needed a smartphone. Shortly after the invention of the automobile, nobody thought they needed a car. With this is mind, let’s look at a product like the automated baby rocker, as seen in the above picture. I think it’s fair to say that many people did not know they would need this electrical baby bouncing device. Well, now that it is available, I might think about buying one. There is an underlying premise attached to this product, though. The premise is that nobody actually wants to rock their baby, it’s a nuisance having to do that, but yes, they have to be rocked - in order to fall asleep or to be calm or whatever. So in a good technocratic fashion you offer a solution to that dilemma. Many designers and engineers have thought about it and believe that they have found the absolute and final neutral ground in a technology that „liberates“ you from doing the task - by doing it for you. Same goes for breast milk pumps, etc. The baby will get to be fed with your milk and that’s all there is to it. All problems should be factually and technically determinable and thus solvable. The technical approach formulates problems as technical problems such that technological methods and solutions can take hold. An implicit premise of the corresponding technocratic mentality is: The world is just funny when you look at it from a technical point of view - impractical in all human relationships, highly uneconomical and inexact in their methods. Now what if the fact that YOU (the parent) doing the rocking is actually more beneficial for the baby (and for yourself) than the rocking itself? Reminds me on an experiment allegedly carried out by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century saw young infants raised without human interaction in an attempt to determine if there was a natural language that they might demonstrate once their voices matured. It is claimed he was seeking to discover what language would have been imparted into Adam and Eve by God. The experiments were recorded by the monk Salimbene di Adam in his Chronicles, who wrote that Frederick encouraged "foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learned whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which he took to have been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments." In other words, the babies died. Now what if the fact that the mother breastfeeding her baby directly is actually more important than the milk itself? Now what if talking directly to people is actually more important to you than using face-time on your smartphone? Now what if you actually want to walk the 10 miles to that hardware store, where it would be so convenient to take the car? Look, there’s not even a sidewalk. You’re not supposed to walk there. Now what if these arguments and opinions of yours are not considered „valid“ anymore? Remember what General Patton famously said: “If everyone’s thinking alike, then someone isn’t thinking.”
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AuthorThomas Behrens Visual Communication is not only taking part in the digital transformation - actively and passively - he will also reflect on it. Hence the blog. Archives
January 2021
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