Music 256a Reading Response 8

Angel Fan

Reading Response

Artful Design Ch. 8: Manifesto + Coda

As technology advances at a seemingly ever-accelerating rate, Ge Wang’s Artful Design asks us to slow down and put the ‘why’ above the ‘how’, but the ‘why’ in Artful Design diverges greatly from more traditional conversations around why we design technology and uses what I find to be a uniquely humanistic lens, which is especially central to Chapter 8 discussing the philosophy behind artful design. I always thought that the humanistic part of technology was the incorporation of artistry and creativity. However, through this book I’ve learned that it actually boils down to values. A lot of arguments against new technologies emphasize a lack of human values, but about a quarter of the way into Chapter 8 of Artful Design it states that “underlying values of design arise from individual morality”, which gives rise to “ethical dilemmas [that] arise when there are compelling arguments for conflicting values” (pg. 416). I thought this passage illustrated the nuance and complexity of conversations around designing technology extraordinarily well, and it’s not that there now exists technology that is purely harmful. For example, there are endless arguments both for and against social media. This passage got me thinking about how we can better define the ways in which technology is harmful by ensuring that our values are aligned with one another, which is nearly impossible for an entire society. How can we agree upon a hierarchy of values when it comes to the design and development of new technologies? There was a recurring theme that came up in class about the golden and platinum rules. The golden rule states, “treat others as you would be treated.” The platinum rule, on the other hand, states, “treat others as they would have you treat them.” This subtle distinction is not something that I thought about before, but I actually think that after all the discussions we’ve had in class and reading this book is the underlying reason why so many technologies fail to be humanistic. The conversation around designing technology these days seems to be a bunch of overly educated people in a think tank that represent 0.1% of the world population discussing how to solve society’s problems without thinking about the people it’s for and if they even want these problems solved.

I’d be remiss to write my last reading response to this book and not discuss the sublime. The sublime was such an interesting concept introduced in this book because we all know what it is, but it is so difficult to define and can seem impossible to intentionally achieve. The sublime seems to appeal to a deep want, rather than a need, and with technology so focused on problem solving it’s no wonder that achieving the sublime seems so far out of reach of modern technology. I thought about some of the examples of artful design we had gone over, and something I found interesting was there was such an individualistic intention behind many of them. The design of artful, humanistic technologies seemed rooted in something personal. Someone realized that as a human they really enjoyed a certain aspect and they didn’t necessarily intend it to appeal to the masses, which forged a stronger connection with those they did connect with. The sublime seems so elusive, but for now as long as we design with intentions of playfulness, engagement, and underlying morality, we’re at least headed in the right direction.