In the Bubble, by John Thackara

Earlier this year I bought myself a copy of John Thackara’s “In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World”, to get a glimpse of what this designer/futurist had to say about sustainability and society. While published in 2005, the content didn’t seem a bit dated as some business and trend books usually do. In many regards, I’d compare the book to “Natural Capitalism” for its contributions of highlighting social/environmental issues and solutions. But what Thackara also does is mix in storytelling, history, trends, potential future scenarios, philosophy, and criticism in such a manner that gives the reader a circular view of what’s going on, without placing heavy emphasis on normative ideas.

Many times in my book reviews I go through the various chapters, highlighting the main points. That hasn’t been easy with this book as it relates to many subjects, some of which readers will already be familiar with and for which further detail won’t be necessary. So at times my writing will more take the form of notes, rather than flowing editorial.

Lightness

Reference to physical weight reduction for process-related energy expenditures (and by that token carbon footprint); systems thinking; adequate provision, consumption, and replenishment of five capitals (natural, social, human, manufactured, financial); eco-efficiency principles of natural capitalism; low material/energy intense solutions; service design instead of ownership; design for easier disassembly leading to increased chance of up/recycling.

Speed

Increased consumption rates are associated with faster-paced, more dynamic lifestyles. The big issue is acceleration. Speed isn’t free. Eco-efficiency gains need to be balanced out in future innovations developed for the same end results. Previously, society operated much more on event/personal time (kairos) versus clock/public time (chronos). Religious calendars had periods of slowness (like Lent, Advent, Ramadan) for a reason. For improved lives, we need to move from real-time to more quality time. Trend examples: slow food, slow cities. Thankfully we tend to live slower as we get older, and with time more people are becoming 50+. Another trend is downshifting life (less money but more flexible time for quality living). The early internet theory of disintermediation’s mass effect on economics and transactions guided by techno invisible hand not entirely true. Trust and social interaction/relationships are still highly important. The telephone is still a very fast and time-effective means of conducting business and developing relations. Japanese word for trust cultivation: Nemawashi - laying the groundwork; process by which groups in Japan develop the shared understanding without which nothing much gets done. “If trust is established it takes  less effort to reach a consensus in regard to any issue.” Trust can’t be digitized.

“Acceleration weighs us down. Always on means seldom free. But the design challenge now is not to design slow systems to replace fast ones…but to enable situations that support an infinite variety of fast and slow moves - at a rhythm dictated by us, not by the system.”

Mobility

Car use versus trains/planes is high. Consider the quantity and quality of time spent in mobility. Actual time = transport + transaction/maintenance time. Logistics is the lifeblood of living operations. While going from Make-to-Build to Make-to-Order and RFID (radio frequency identification) have improved systemic efficiency, large supply networks also have costs in energy (carbon footprint) and materials (packaging/other) from transport and 3rd party warehousing. Solution ideas: 1) Think more, drive less, intermodal transport 2) Substitution; telepresence (like web conferencing) is good, although imperfect for social reasons 3) Move from faster to closer.

Locality

Networked & diverse cities/regions are more resilient and able to take care of their economic and food needs as conditions change.

Situation

Work and living spaces need to be better designed (physically and spiritually) for higher qualities of life.

Conviviality

While the dictionary meaning is “Fond of feasting, drinking, and good company”, John talks in broader terms of human health (physical and social). Solution examples include improved health care systems, barter/noncash trading exchanges, and connected communities of practice/interest. While not mentioned, some of these solutions have come to see the light of day through enabling technology including Freecycle, Craigslist, Meetup.com, Upcoming.org, Tweetups, and the like. For examples of cultural aspects we should consider retaining or designing for, see cultural universals as discussed by George Murdock, among others.

Learning

Too much content; little time to think. “Learning is about the acquisition of new skills, including social ones - not just stockpiling of facts.” eLearning’s history has seen its hype, failures, and re-considered potential. Although to be viable for users, tech support is critical. Increasingly there are shared learning opportunities in corporate/organizational education through wikis and other (social) knowledge management systems. Personal interaction remains important though as part of the learning process, in addition to flexible time management. “New geographies of learning need to be based on redesigned configurations of space, place, and network that respect the social and collaborative nature of learning - while still exploiting the dynamic potential of networked collaboration. We need to design the spatial configuration of education so that it connects communities and learners that, right now, tend to be separated from one another.” Also important are the role that projects play in learning to construct and collaborate; students should help design them too, not just be dictated by the teacher or syllabus. “Technology becomes interesting when it facilitates new kinds of interaction among teachers, students, and the external world - and this does not need to be expensive. To get the most out of technology and networks, new skills and attitudes are needed - and these either are free or can be taught.” These include search & evaluation skills, learning how to be found and how to link, editing, communicating, and organizing all kinds of digital media. Different ways to share & experience knowledge. Assessment (self and guided). Mentors. Mass collaborative learning, wikis. Property rights and commons. Playtime and games; effect of modeling and simulation upon learning.

Literacy

Info overload isn’t the problem. “It’s the unfiltered, unsorted, and unframed…lacking mechanisms to select what’s important. Design task is to make information digestable.”

Smartness

Thackara’s law: “If you put smart technology into a pointless product, the result will be a stupid product.” Law of diminishing amazement (LODA), “The more fancy tech you pack into a product, the harder it becomes to impress people with its benefits.” John goes on to talk about the silliness of some “smart appliance” concepts, and goes on to extol biomimicry. The most important property of future materials is Lightness (to make, to operate/use, to recover, to recycle). Goes on to discuss how advanced sensors and computing yield adaptations to changing conditions in systems. Yet with pervasive computing, people will always be smarter because complex calculations can’t always take ALL variables into account. Personal example: internet ads can sometimes be highly irrelevant and sometimes disrespectful because circumstantial and contextual information is unavailable for conditional logic. HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) design is difficult and can often reduce UX (user experience) satisfaction for a significant percentage of people, if personal interaction options are completely taken away.

“The transition to a light and sustainable economy means moving from an economy of transactions - selling and buying things - to an economy in which the quality of services, not the acquisition of goods, becomes our measure of well-being.” John questions the viability of techno-dependent, ambient intelligent future. Quotes from James Woudhuysen, former manager of research for Philips, “in new technology, systems are more prone to being incompatible than to matching up with each other.”

Flow

John ends the book with the following seven transition frameworks:

1) Blueprint and Plan to Sense and Respond

“Being responsive to events in a context and being able to respond quickly and appropriately when reality changes. This implies that we develop an understanding and sensitivity to the morphology of systems, their dynamics, their “intelligence”- how they work and what stimulates them.” Desired outcomes aren’t static. By understanding why a system is in one state, we can explore the kind of interventions that would nudge it into another more desirable one. This means designing as steering. From thinking of ourselves as authors of a finished work, toward facilitators to help people act more intelligently, in a more design-minded way, in the systems we all live in. Going from designing on the world versus designing in the world. Design in such a framework becomes a process of continuous observation, measurement, and feedback.

2) From High Concept to Deep Context

“Small changes to interconnecting subsystems can make things better, but they can also make things worse. This is why the application of “high-concept” design to contexts we barely understand is irresponsible and probably counterproductive.” Systems are complex; we need to appreciate that and design our man-made ones in that we act lightly, sense feedback, and act again.

3) From Top-Down Design to Seeding Edge Effects

Interconnectedness and the ability for small changes to occur from within -> Dexterity. “To find out what’s happening on the edge, we first need good peripheral vision.” We need to spot opportunities at the juncture between industries; to imagine relationships and connections where none existed before; above all, we need to look in new places for inspiration, because most solutions will involve new alliances and new connections.

4) From Blank Sheets of Paper to Smart Recombination

We need to reuse and recombine actors, ideas, and organizations. The challenge is to innovate by learning from the world.

5) From Science Fiction to Social Fiction

Enhance daily life. The important point when envisioning scenarios of human activity is to distinguish explicitly between what Ezio Manzini calls disabling and enabling solutions. Human interaction is important. Service design sweet spots occur at intersection of latent social needs, open systems, smart consumers, and smart companies.

6) From Designing For to Designing With

Collaborative design, ethnographic research, user-centered design, open innovation, and agile development.

7) From Design as a Product to Design as a Service

And that about does it for today. John’s book is 226 pages and is a worthwhile read for its philosophical inquiries.

Tagged as: biomimicry, culture, eco-efficiency, health, john thackara, learning, lightness, philosophy, society, strategy, systems thinking, technology