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I was walking with Xavier crossing Victoria Market* last night to send back the DVDs that we borrowed from VideoEzy. On the way back we saw a new parking machine just beside the atm machine. What triggered my thought at that moment was that the whole parking lot is going to be managed by a machine. It used to be ‘human manage’ system, but now they change it to the ‘machine system’. My thought is not only the transformation from the human to machine systems but more than that.
I wonder…
Why there is a need to change from ‘human to machine’?
What will happen with people job, who’ve been replaced by the machine?
I’ve been reading this book recently, called Authenticity by David Boyle. The first chapter talks about living in artificial world. The world full of new inventions and technologies. I’m not blaming the technologies, but i’m blaming the people who make use of it for making more profits. And designers are involved in this process. We always do. We, designers (in any kind) have always been told to create new invention to make things easy for people to use. How to solve problems? How to help or improve the systems? What can we designers, do to assist in this? Then we came up with new way through technologies, new methods of paying rent, parking tickets, buying our needs and many more.
We also came out with email so we can get in touch with each other as fast as wind. Yes! indeed these new invention, do make things easy. Then everbody wants to have it and use it because it seems like a fashion or trend. People who don’t know how to use computer seem stupid and not into fashion. The effect of an increasingly virtual world, where nothing is quite what it seems, has lead to a growing clamour for what is genuine and human. ‘Human relations are declining in the selling game,’ says the legendary former general Electric chief executive Jack Welch.
But all these technologies do connect us to anyone around the world. Then comes globalization. Globalization is not suddenly going t disappear, sending us all back to a cottage economy. Nor are we going to un-invent the internet and beat our computers into ploughshares. It’s not going to happen. But simply guess globalization is so powerful, there’s an equally strong opposite reaction going on.
We start to be greedy and to forget where all this comes from. I’m not against all this. I find it hard to be far from my computer. I even find it hard to write, because I’m so use to type on my computer. It’s great, i can finish things fast and easily using technologies. But I also realised by writing my own words with pen, or brush, or whatever tools, is giving me a different pleasure, different feeling and i miss it. Well i dont want to continue ranting around this. I should stop for a while, not for long though. I will end this with few questions.
With the human systems change to machine systems, what can designers do not to participate in this?
How can designers nurture the changes?
What are designers participation in this process?
* Victoria Market is a famous fresh food market in Melbourne city. It is one of the tourist attraction.