Designing for the Next Billion Seconds¶
Designing for the Next Billion Seconds
10 to the power of 12 seconds. Another way to count 31,4 years. Time is relative! So design is?
During the first day of lecture, Andres shared his background and his design approach with us. The possible futures rather than singular one was really inspirational.
Beyond the lecture “Everything Manifesto” which is a projection of 2050 with the interrelation of population of humanity, energy demand, big data extraction, time and money helps us to understand the scale of 1 billion second concept.
Three important take aways of the first day were;
Designing for systematic changes is better than looking for instant single solution.
The terms and concepts -wording- of the services and products that we are hearing everywhere should be considered carefully in order to be aware about the effects on of all those on our planet. (Cloud is actually a giant data storage warehouses which has severe effects on energy consumption and on Earth directly, Facebook is a media company which hides itself behind the social network concept to monetize the personal informations of the users)
Design for humbleness; which means humans cannot save the planet, but as humans we can care the planet-earth more.
I like this last statement a lot because as humans we think that every idea that we have would be the idea of the century which can change the world in a good way. I think as humans we are not patient enough and looking for instant solution because of our limited time on planet earth and we want to see the result of our works as soon as possible.
Two main concepts from the lecture that we focused on;
The concept of “Degrowth” in terms of lifestyle and consumption which is influenced by all kind of media is possible and personally I am trying to live by consuming less. Additionally, it is essential and inevitable for the sustainability and resources that our planet has. On the other hand, I am skeptical about the impact of economic degrowth to the unemployment rates all around the world. As todays general approach, belief, measure and criteria of development is economic growth which has been influenced by capitalism and colonialism, it will take time to change that perspective. I believe remote working that one of the good results of pandemic decrease the consumption of goods among the white collar staff would be a milestone-start point for degrowth. Degrowth should be considered and supported with alternative solutions to avoid the negative effects on unemployment especially among the underdeveloped countries.
Moreover, I am still not sure about the term of “Critical Hope”. Hope is something so special, necessary and human-made but fragile concept. The tiny edge line between being realistic and romantic. So, I am not sure critical thinking and critical hope are the same things. I prefer to name it differently. As capitalists and colonialists are so imaginative in wording, we should be more careful on that as well to prevent the lose of hope in our communities.
The most important thing which our stories that me and my classmates worked on and presented on friday class don’t have was certainly “JOY”. Stories need at least one grasshopper which provides melody, joy and hope. Most probably it was because of the time limitation that I was not able to insist on that to my friends in the group especially after a two hours of walk and discussion on the topic.
Food and snacks are mainly from insects and algae by Carolina Almeida
Beyond the content of the lecture, I appreciated the methodology and ideology of Andres during the classes. I liked the using of music, different ways of presentations and interactions and various spots that he choose to support his way of sharing his experiences and knowledge. The only advice that I would like to give him to use less animated images on his digital presentations.
One last thing that I want to add as a possible answer to one of the questions (he was wondering that why almost all of the people -especially in our community think about capitalism and colonialism in the same way but why it is still hard to overcome them) that my collegues asked during the rep up session took place on the beach of Bogatel; human behaviours in terms of thinking-speaking and acting-practicing would sometimes be different because of the conditions. It’s always easy to speak against the usage of plastic in packages, but not so easy to stop using them.
age; location; weather by caglaralkan
