"Hertzian Tales" by Anthony Dunne - Major Studio 2

From the foreword of the 1999 edition: Dunne believes that “the most difficult challenges for designers of electronic objects now lie not in technical and semiotic functionality, where optimal levels of performance are already attainable, but in the realms of metaphysics, poetry, and aesthetics, where little research has been carried out.” “[D]esigners have not exploited the aesthetic dimension of new materials with the same energy that engineers have exploited their functional possibilities.”

These two quotes indicate the point at which we find ourselves: efficient beyond our IT department’s wildest 90’s dreams, responding to emails from our moms before the ping is finished ringing out from our smartphones. But designers have never really moved beyond the position of placing the technologic guts into containers, creating “semiotic skins for incomprehensible technologies.” The narrative of consumption has not yet changed. The existence of skeuomorphs is a great example of that. Why does a computer calendar have to look anything like a physical paper calendar? Aren’t we all beyond needed those physical forms to teach us how to use things? Or rather, if the digital model deviates even slightly from the real thing then we are left confounded when a new and useful but still calendrical version would have prompted us to expect new things and learn new a better uses for the form. To relate this to Jaimer’s point, we are plugging brand new exciting things into systems that were designed, in the case of the calendar, thousands of years ago. How can that be anything but a limitation on the functional possibilities? Letter writing, files and calendars were produced with the technology of their time. Not to mention the loss of intimacy in using office equipment for familiar communication is another place where a system of human love and connection is having a feeble and crude tool to facilitate that communication. video chatting as opposed to emailing is a start. but the typical placement of the camera and the screen make it impossible to make eye contact with the other person, one of the biggest benefits of speaking and communicating in person.