An ethics of mutual care Foregrounding maintenance and repair as an aspect of technological work invites not only new functional but also moral relations to the world of technology. It references what is in fact a very old but routinely forgotten relationship of humans to things in the world: namely, an ethics of mutual care and responsibility. Steven J. Jackson, Rethinking Repair ethicshumanitymoralitytechnology
I choose a world with pyramids Which would you choose: a world with pyramids? Or without? Humanity has always dreamt of flight, but the dream is cursed. My aircraft are destined to become tools for slaughter and destruction. But still, I choose a world with pyramids in it. Which world will you choose? Hayao Miyazaki, The Wind Rises Beauty in flight flighthumanityinnovationmorality
The quality of the day It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Henry David Thoreau, Walden Suburban Nation uxartmoralitybeauty
Nature undisturbed My chief aim is simply to describe and explain the technological fabric of society, not to judge whether it is good or bad, beautiful or ugly. And yet I would not argue that technology is neutral or value-free. Quite the contrary: I suggest that the signs of human presence are the only elements of the landscape that have and moral or aesthetic significance at all. In nature undisturbed, a desert is not better or worse than a forest or a swamp; there is simply no scale on which to rank such things unless it is a human scale of utility or beauty. Only when people intervene in nature is there any question of right or wrong, better or worse. Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape naturemoralityaestheticshumanity
We infantilize ourselves Here in the US, we expect government and law to be our conscience. Our superego, you could say. It has something to do with liberal individualism, and something to do with capitalism, but I don't understand much of the theoretical aspect—what I see is what I live in. Americans are in a way crazy. We infantilize ourselves. We don't think of ourselves as citizens—parts of something larger to which we have profound responsibilities. We think of ourselves as citizens when it comes to our rights and privileges, but not our responsibilities. We abdicate our civic responsibilities to the government and expect the government, in effect, to legislate morality. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King societygovernmentpoliticsmoralitycivics
List of games that Buddha would not play A List en.wikipedia.org … Guessing at letters traced with the finger in the air or on a friend's back. (letters in the Brahmi script) Guessing a friend's thoughts. … gameszenmorality
The amorality of Web 2.0 An Essay by Nicholas Carr www.roughtype.com The Internet is changing the economics of creative work – or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture – and it’s doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices. Wikipedia might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it’s created by amateurs rather than professionals, it’s free. And free trumps quality all the time. wwwmoralityeconomicsgoodness
A Mindful Mobile OS An Article by Clo S. thistooshallgrow.com I read and loved Potential's "iOS 15, Humane" proposition. Published earlier in June by co-founders Welf and Oliver, it tackles how iOS could help us better protect our attention. As a designer who cares about and writes about digital wellness, I'm profoundly aligned with their suggestions. Persuasive design Disclosure requirement From infinite feeds to pages Was this time well spent? Regret tax Conditions of use moralityethicsuxsoftwaredesign
The Interpretation of Microstructures of Metallic Artifacts An Essay from A Search for Structure by Cyril Stanley Smith The meaning of objectsSomething akin to styleFrom the head of JoveThe objects themselves speak loudlyThe way it has been made+1 More
Something akin to style My own attitude toward the microstructure of metals is not unlike that of an art historian regarding a painting or sculpture. There is something akin to style even in a photomicrograph. There are aspects of structure that are not immediately apparent to the untrained eye, and quite minor features may be clues to a deep meaning. style
From the head of Jove A complex structure is a result of, and to a large extent a record of, its past. Though a proton and an electron may, as a pair, be able to spring full-panoplied from the head of Jove, more complex things cannot, or at least do not. Everything complicated must have had a history, and its internal structural features arise from its history and provide a specific record of it. One might call these structural details of memory “funeous,” after the unfortunate character in Borge’s story “Funes the Memorious” who remembered everything. What the advancing interface leaves behind memorytimestructurematerial
The objects themselves speak loudly The written record is very little help in determining the techniques used by ancient metalworkers, though the objects themselves speak loudly to an educated ear.
The way it has been made The internal structure of a work of art in metal can often throw as much, or more, light on its origin as can be derived from stylistic analysis. Moreover, the techniques employed can provide clues to the habits of mind of the people who originated them. …Perhaps the most important reason for structural studies of museum objects is that the intimate knowledge so derived as to the way in which an object has been made adds so greatly to the aesthetic enjoyment of it. Very often some detail and sometimes the whole of an effective design arises directly in the exploitation of the merits and the overcoming of the difficulties of a specific technique, in the reaction between the artist’s fingers and his material. historytechniquemakingobjects
Aesthetically motivated curiosity It seems that the first and most imaginative use of practically every material was, before quite modern times, in making something decorative. People are experimentally minded when looking for decorative effects, but they can’t experiment with the established techniques on which their livelihood depends. / It is of basic significance for human history that, from the cave paintings on, almost all inorganic materials and treatments of them to modify their structure appear first in decorative objects rather than in tools or weapons necessary for survival. Aesthetically motivated curiosity, or perhaps just play, seems to have been the most important stimulus to discovery. materialexperiments