Oct 29, 2015
A vision of tech as personal totem, rather than commodity. via MIT Media Lab
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from India
seen from China
seen from Canada
seen from China
seen from Ireland
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Canada
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Canada
A vision of tech as personal totem, rather than commodity. via MIT Media Lab
The joyous technological freedom of, uh, south China...
Knotty, Naughty, Noughty: Metaphor, Paradox and Perspective
The invitation flew into my inbox, the words instantly distilling into a haiku of goodness:
Knotty Objects — Come!
Media Lab plus MoMA
Brick Steak Phone Bitcoin
I accepted without knowing exactly what I what I was accepting, but a door marked “Media Lab” and “MoMA” should always be opened. It might—likely would—turn out to be a rabbit hole, but a really good one. This would be a conference where heads would spin. More to the point, my head would spin, which was just what was needed: perspective from the arty periphery to balance the laser-focused entrepreneurial intensity of startups, MBAs and marketers with whom I had been spending much of my time. Metaphors would be celebrated. Imagination assumed. Yes, please, count me in...
__________________________________
The knot at the heart of the Knotty Objects turned out to be a reference to mathematics:
“... (A) knot is defined as a closed, non-self-intersecting curve that is embedded in three dimensions and cannot be untangled to produce a simple loop (i.e., the unknot). While in common usage, knots can be tied in string and rope such that one or more strands are left open on either side of the knot, the mathematical theory of knots terms an object of this type a "braid" rather than a knot. To a mathematician, an object is a knot only if its free ends are attached in some way so that the resulting structure consists of a single looped strand.” — Wolfram MathWorld
In other words, a three dimensional continuum with neither a beginning nor an end point: something that cannot be disassembled.
The four chosen objects layered metaphor upon metaphor: Brick, Steak, Phone and Bitcoin.
Brick: A core modular unit of fabrication and the literal building blocks of civilization for the last 7,000 years. Bricks writ knotty can be made of almost anything: clay, concrete, plastic, mycelia, genetic code, computer code, electrical circuits. A brick can also be a framework or a paradigm.
__________________________________
Steak: Symbolizes the abstraction and distancing of consumers from the complicated reality of modern food production, both in vivo or in vitro.
__________________________________
Phone: The defining invention of the 21st century, as much about innovation and status as about communication.
__________________________________
Bitcoin: A borderless global transactional platform bypassing traditional banks, financial institutions and governments. It is born of algorithms, rooted in solutions to puzzles that only computers equipped with special chips can solve.
_______________________________
PANELS
A series of complementary panels cantilevered between the “shortie” videos. Brick was paired with a session called The New Metabolism. The Japanese post-war Metabolist movement in architecture, which took inspiration from the study of organic growth, served as the overlap.
It quickly became clear that the four archetype knots themselves formed a kind of meta-knot. For example, detailed maps of biological metabolism spoke to complexity—Bitcoin—while cells and the DNA code that guide their development could be considered Bricks.
Surprisingly, there was no mention on the panel of the “sensor-ization” of everything: the Internet of Things. Yet the “things” are waking up, to paraphrase designer and futurist Mickey McManus, creating feedback loops that function as a digital metabolism connecting the world in ways never before possible.
Steak was paired with a panel on New Dimensions in Organic Design, which arced from the development of in vitro meat created in a petri dish to a highly specific gene editing technique called CRISPR/Cas9 capable of altering heritable traits in sexually reproducing species whether in the lab and out in the wild. Both could just as easily have been classified as Bricks or, indeed, Phones, since lab meat and transgenic organisms are manufactured.
The Phones panel, Manufactured Objects, highlighted a website designed to support small batch manufacturing in the US along with several critical design projects, including one that involved the commissioning of genetically altered fish—something that could also have been slotted under Steak.
Finally, Bitcoin was paired with Design and Complexity, a panel that largely steered clear of finance, but dazzled with tales of data visualized wind maps reminiscent of Van Gogh, the dizzying world of BOAR (Between Ordered and Random) and the art and craft of tatting doilies. Each data point and, indeed, each tatted knot could be thought of as a Brick, bringing us right back to where we started.
Ideas flashed by at such a furious pace that the sheer velocity not only blurred gaps in logic, but also made it possible to squint and see connections otherwise not readily apparent. We were, after all, at Media Lab, which for the last three decades has staked its claim on being “antidisciplinary” (i.e., transdisciplinary with rebel swagger), daring to think, as Steve Jobs put it, different. Only through persistent curiosity and a willingness to explore the unfamiliar can novel connections be made and silo-shredding collaborations imagined.
________________________________
ETHICS
Critical design could be the poster child for antidisciplinary, fusing together elements of design, science, fiction, politics, history and theatre to explore the questions “what if?” and “then what?” Pioneered by British designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, the realities envisioned are often dystopian. Done well, critical design presents complexities and paradoxes in ways that often shock and disturb, inviting viewers to consider social, cultural and ethical implications (see Dunne & Raby video and Daisy Ginsberg’s work).
Done poorly, critical design can quickly devolve into provocation for its own sake. For example, during the Manufcatured Objects session, Revital Cohen described a project called Sterile that she produced with partner Tuur Van Balen last year. According to The Arts Catalyst, which co-commissioned the work:
“Albino goldfish engineered to hatch without reproductive organs. They were not conceived as animals but made as objects, unable to partake in the biological cycle. An edition of 45 goldfish was produced for the artists by Professor Yamaha Etsuro in his laboratory in Hokkaido, Japan, following an intricate collaboration process which began in 2011.” (emphasis added)
This is shocking, yes, though not, I suspect, in the way the designers intended. The fish were still sentient life forms, whether or not they were able to reproduce. By Cohen and Van Balen’s definition, every woman past menopause should be considered an object. Having written about the exotic pet trade, I appreciated the attempt to raise awareness on the commodification of animals. But a line was crossed when they commissioned the intentional creation of deformed creatures: Cohen and Van Balen are part of the problem, not its solution. Sterile lies at the end of a continuum described by Daisy Ginsberg that has transformed the production of meat into an industrial abstraction. It speaks to a profoundly troubling disconnect between humans and nature and a frightening cluelessness about our place in the greater scheme of things.
It also raises the question of ethics: knowing right from wrong. Scientists working with animals must grapple with this as well, weighing risk, benefit and the potential for cruelty.
__________________________________
The implications for the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technique go far beyond the lab, exponentially increasing the opportunity for unintended consequences in the wild. The Wyss Institute’s Kevin Esvelt, a New Dimensions in Organic Design panelist, explained how an altered gene inserted into a chromosone using the technique comes bundled with an additional piece of code—Cas9—that allows it to be spread throughout a population. For example, if a transgenic mosquito were to mate with a wild mosquito, code from the altered gene bundle would first cut out the corresponding section of the chromosone inherited from the wild parent and then use Cas9 to rebuild it inserting the modification. Given enough generations, all mosquitos would carry the altered gene.
(* click here to watch the video)
Esvelt sees the potential to use CRISPR for all sorts of applications such as creating malaria-proof mosquitos, a process he calls “sculpting evolution.” It is a troubling metaphor that obscures the possibility of doing real harm along the way. Our species has a long history of bending the laws of nature through breeding crops and altering landscapes to better suit needs and desires, but CRISPR’s mix of specificity and broad reach are designed to break those laws, short-circuiting natural selection. Still, nature has a way of batting last: A species that cannot evolve past a CRISPR-inserted trait loses the ability to adapt to change, with ramifications that could easily, if subtly, reverberate throughout entire ecosystems. Along with better, faster ways to synthesize DNA and even new DNA letters, CRISPR is a biological box of matches.
Several top scientists have called for an open public debate to work out the rules for using CRISPR, but it is difficult to see how that will play out. Already, a team in China has tried using it to alter a gene in human embryos. Although the effort was a failure and roundly denounced, few doubt that there will be other attempts.
DEBATE
The summit concluded with a debate that itself turned out to be a knot. When asked to vote yay or nay on the statement, “Design must fill current human needs before imagining new futures,” the abstentions carried the day, a rejection of an impossible question. Yes, of course, humans needs must be addressed. But given the consequences of the many, mostly fraught futures before us, we also need the vision and imagination of critical designers to help us better navigate the dangerous waters ahead. Anyone care to take on CRISPR?
__________________________________
By dawn the next morning, the knot of Knotty began to unravel as one by one people headed to the airport for parts distant, or to the train station bound for cities along the Eastern seaboard. I booked a late flight back to Chicago just in case I might be invited to see “antidisciplinary” in action at Media Lab labs (which I was) and to let thoughts settle in a head now well and truly spun.
For all the emphasis on focus in our lives, especially in business, the brass ring of innovation requires peripheral vision: a preconscious awareness that allows us to detect patterns, sense movement and literally navigate the path forward. Its value defies easy measurement. It is the opposite of teaching to the test and, in fact, is essential for creative thought.
Artists, designers, scientists, inventors and, of course, children are at ease shifting between the two perspectives. What is learned from looking up close merges into the eclectic collection of the peripheral butterfly net. It is a seamless loop with neither a beginning nor an end point: another knot. To see forest and trees, the field of view must be expanded. And for me, jumping down a really good, somewhat knotty rabbit hole always seems to help.
—J. A. Ginsburg / @TrackerNews
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
RELATED:
Knotty Objects panels (video)
Antidisciplinary by Joi Ito (blog post)
States of Design ‘04: Critical Design by Paola Antonelli (DOMUS)
Primordial: When Things Wake Up by Mickey McManus (SOLID - video)
CRISPR, the disruptor by Heidi Ledford with audio report by Kerri Smith (Nature)
Let’s Talk about Designer Wild Critters, Not Designer Babies by Tim De Chant (NOVA NEXT / PBS)
Training Your Brain to Improve Your Vision by James Hamblin (The Atlantic)
* videos produced by m ss ng p eces
Check out the shorties we made for MIT Media Lab's first design-focused summit, Knotty Objects! Each film framed a fascinating conversation on a complex, knotty object: BRICK by Sam Kuhn, PHONE by Matthew Charof , and STEAK by Jordan Fish.
Tomorrow: Follow MIT Media Lab's Knotty Objects design summit, organized in collaboration with MoMA curator Paola Antonelli, via streaming video and #knottyobjects on social media. The summit will bring together designers, scientists, engineers, makers, writers, curators, and scholars to discuss four complex, omnipresent objects, along with the rich stories they can tell.
What are "Knotty Objects?" Next week's MIT Media Lab summit explores the idea of four objects—the brick, the bitcoin, the steak, and the phone—that entangle practices, processes, and policies. When successful, they're transformative. MoMA curator Paola Antonelli collaborated with Neri Oxman and Kevin Slavin of the MIT Media Lab to organize this summit, which will convene designers, scientists, authors, and curators to explore design at the intersection of science, engineering, and cultural production. You can join in remotely via live streams of events and by searching the hashtag #knottyobjects.