One of the themes that I have been trying to get across to audience in some of my recent lectures has been the philosophical and political implications of technology. The point I am trying to illustrate is that technology is embedded not only with the designer’s ideas about the user’s needs, the way in which the technology will be used and the marketability of the product – but each product also contains a depth of philosophical and political beliefs.
Therefore while in Borås I spoke about a chair that happened to be in the lecture hall. It was a typical Scandinavian conference room chair. The fact that we can recognize a chair as typical Scandinavian is, in itself, telling.
The chair’s “Scandinavianess” was revealed in the result of multiple design choices.
The choices of shape, the weight, the cloth, the pattern on the cloth and the wooden frame make the chair and also reveal its economic, social, moral, political and philosophical background. The most obvious give away was the choice of pinewood. This honey color has come to symbolize Scandinavian design from high culture Aalto to mass production Ikea.
The shape reveals that it is intended for audiences, the shape and the cloth show that it is not for schools. The pattern of the cloth ages the chair and shows it belongs to a bygone era of design (it’s the early 90’s).
While it is relatively easy to illustrate these points it is more complex to show the connection to the way in which the technology controls and regulates our behavior. This control is particularly relevant in technologies that manipulate and alter the way in which we communicate.
A recent development on Facebook illustrates the way in which technology controls and enables what users can do. The Facebook profile has long had an obligatory “is” in the way in which the user can describe what is going on. The result can be something like “Mathias is at work”, “Mathias is sleeping” and “Mathias is feeling good”.
The little “is” limits the way in which the user can communicate. Maybe the user is no longer, maybe the user wants to be “was” or why even a verb of being? By removing the compulsory state of being the user now is free to express much more than a state of being. “Mathias wants…”, “Mathias runs…” or “Mathias eats”.
This change enables the user and dares him/her to make an existential shift from the Heideggerian state (as Christopher puts it). The question, of course, is whether or not the user will dare to going beyond the “is” now that the freedom to do so has been enabled.