“Technology is culture; it is not something separate; it is no longer “I.T.”; we cannot choose to have it or not. It just is, like air.”
—Dan Hill, On the smart city; Or, a ‘manifesto’ for smart citizens instead
I love the ‘technology just is, like air’ concept. Brings to mind the notion that fish don’t see the water they swim in. We have reached a turning point where tech is so deeply embedded in our culture, like language, clothing, and buildings before it, that its role is as central as those, and now perhaps more so.
Sometimes When We Touch
Dan HillDan Hill - Sometimes When We Touch
Sometimes When We Touch
Dan HillDan Hill - Sometimes When We Touch (1978)
Sometimes When We Touch
Dan Hill-Dan Hill, Sometimes When We Touch.
Sometimes When We Touch
Dan HillDan Hill - Sometimes When We Touch
And sometimes when we touch, the honesty’s too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I wanna hold you till I die, till we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides
Questioning As A Way To Find Answers
Dan Hill has a great post about an ‘imaginary appliance’ called Brickstarter, and explains how speculative design (not a term he is using, but he should) animates the process of getting people to consider the implications of a design:
Dan Hill, Brickstarter – Brickstarter prototype v0.1, and using sketches to ask questions
Previously on Brickstarter: our project is about sketching new cultures of public decision-making, predicated on reversing NIMBY cultures to become YIMBY cultures. We’re creating a platform for making suggestions about how to improve your neighbourhood or environment, and then turn those proposals into projects. We do this in order to start constructive conversations within and around government and other relevant institutions. This aspect engages with “dark matter”: the often imperceptible regulations, legislation, organisational cultures and behavours that can either enable or block systemic change. As such, Brickstarter is actually a prototype of a service, or culture, that attempts to get to the heart of what democratic decision-making might be, of how we might develop our cultures of politics and governance in cities, towns and nations.
This latter aspect actually reveals that the point of Brickstarter is not really in making a website at all, necessarily, but rather in developing a sketch of “a 21st century social contract”. Or at least aspects of that. It’s not making a statement about what that should be, but using prototyping to explore what that might be.
And Brickstarter looks very cool, too:
Sometimes When We Touch
Dan HillI want to invent an app that will delete specific songs from my Ipod the moment my heart stops beating…..This being one, and all of the Barry Manilow songs being the others.
