The task for the RSA brief is to find a wall covering for a changing world AND a new way of offering personal care. The two tasks could not be more different. The only glimmer of a connection I can offer is sustainability, ecology and efficiency.
What is the future of wall covering? Paint or wallpaper? Is wall covering just the surface? What about texture, heat, putting up shelves, putting up posters, putting up noticeboards.
I have requested images of people's walls to get an idea of what a wall is for. So far my question so far has arrived with these (non-scientific) answers: privacy, setting space, decoration, symbolising personality.
The personal care aspects seems obvious but I'm taking nothing for granted. What is it we really want in hygiene? I've been thinking about recycling our waste products and splitting the products into water, fuel and cleaning products. The problem I foresee is that while people would be content with using bio-gas, washing in recycled clear water, bathing in a soap that was once faeces may prove unpalatable.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Needs and Wants
I'm working desperately on my dissertation. I can't believe it. I started this months ago and now I'm concerned that it won't get done for the deadline. I've certainly done all the primary research... All I have to do is get it all down on paper. My problem is that I edit as I go along which, I'm finding, is very dangerous if you actually want to finish something.
Following is the unedited front end of chapter one Needs and Wants. Oh yeah, I think I'm changing the dissertation title again to: Do we really need it?
In the United Kingdom in 2008 we are inundated with possibilities to consume as much as we can. The whole world’s markets and services seem available to us, if not on the high street then at a touch of a mouse button, via a postal request, through telephone services or even through the television remote control. Are we getting what we need or just what we want? And are our requests and eventual receipt of these products and services really our choice or are others deciding for us?
The American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) formulated a Hierarchy of Needs. His theory states that there are six successive levels of needs that human beings must attain in order to function and feel complete, beginning at the bottom with the most basic needs of air, water and food, and culminating at the top with the need for self actualization – to truly know that your life is complete and you need nothing more. Maslow claimed that it was rare for most to reach that level because humans almost always crave something.
* "I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. The average man is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capacities" http://www.abraham-maslow.com/m_motivation/Self-Actualization.asp
The bottom tier of Maslow’s pyramid (fig 1.1) holds the fundamentals of life, common to all animal life. Maslow contests that humans are unique as a species in that once all the needs are met in one category they seek to fulfill other needs. Each need fulfilled opens up further possibilities: the need for shelter, the need to be loved, the need for sex, the need for status. It could be argued that beyond the need for keeping oneself alive there are no real needs, everything beyond the basics are wants or desires, that is, things that make our lives better. And in the twenty-first century is the second to fifth tier correctly placed.
* Many scholars point out that Maslow’s hierarchy lacks empirical verification. These needs may not always operate in a hierarchy, as Maslow says. For example, esteem needs may still motivate even when lower order needs remain unmet. http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Handouts/Maslow.htm
Since we no longer live in caves and hunt our own food the needs of life in an industrial and technological age, and especially in the western world, are well beyond those of our prehistoric ancestors. But have our needs changed? Do we still desire the same fundamental things? Is the need for social security still more important than the need for self-respect and esteem? How do we meet our needs? And is that getting within our own power? Who ultimately decides what we get in an industrialized free-market western economy in the early twenty-first century?
Design has played a crucial part in shaping the world to human needs. In order to meet our needs we design artifacts and systems, which sustain our lives, make it better and add to its quality and its comfort.
* The world we live in has been shaped in many important ways by human action. We have created technological options to prevent, eliminate, or lessen threats to life and the environment and to fulfill social needs. We have dammed rivers and cleared forests, made new materials and machines, covered vast areas with cities and highways, and decided—sometimes willy-nilly—the fate of many other living things. http://www.project2061.org/publications/sfaa/online/chap8.htm#1
Within an industrialised western democracy it is accepted (and expected) that government make provisions for its citizens’ needs. These citizen needs are inalienable rights, provisions for which are stated in both the United States declaration of Independence, (JULY 4, 1776), and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (August 1789), and are also implied within the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (1949): Life, liberty , freedom, equality, the pursuit of happiness among others.
Governments in a democracy do not grant the fundamental freedoms enumerated by Jefferson; governments are created to protect those freedoms that every individual possesses by virtue of his or her existence. http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/whatsdem/whatdm3.htm
Should it be reasonable to believe, therefore, that systems are put in place that would ensure that at least the first two basic needs –– the need for air and the need for water -- are, while not necessarily provided for but are not intentionally withheld? Of course, as air is naturally occurring and is in boundless supply wherever people live and choose to live it cannot be given or taken away by anyone. However, the quality of air in a given area can be determined by decisions made by industry, transport, urban planning, farming etc, with permission by government.
Problems arise when people, institutions and corporations using their freedom to do as they wish have a direct negative impact on other citizens. A by-product, in this respect, of meeting needs is infringing others’ rights to meet basic needs. We may get what we want but we might also get a lot of stuff we don’t want: unintended but nevertheless, inevitable consequences.
The unintended consequences of industry are numerous and have been since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
* The industrial revolution transformed the ability of humans to affect the world's environment. Deforestation greatly increased on a global scale. So did water pollution from chemical and agricultural discharges into lakes and streams, and atmospheric pollution from combustion of huge amounts of coal. http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/eras/era7.htm
But now that the industrial genie has been released from the metaphorical bottles there may be even more consequences. The negative impact on the environment, through the use of fossil fuels, is still there and has large opposition, but with gas and oil reserves running low the west is dependent on Eastern Europe and the Arab states for supplies. And with the supply out of their control there is the risk of excessive price fluctuations, political crisis or a complete halt in supplies.
Finding a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels has been problematic. Viable alternatives (wind, solar, hydro power), are cleaner and while no harmful by-product exists there is still opposition. Nuclear power, possibly the most efficient source of energy, is the most vilified option. The nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986 has made the public at large, already fearful of nuclear energy, even more concerned that it could happen in their own backyard. http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/chernobyl.html
The public fears of what could happen, however unlikely, determines what is allowed on these shores. We may want to reap the benefits of industry and technology but only if the risk to our lives and livelihoods is minimal. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/feb/15/nuclear.greenpolitics1
Rather more dangerously are catastrophic industrial accidents such as the Union Carbide (UC) disaster. Approximately 3,800 people were killed on that December day when dangerous methylisocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the tanks at the UC pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Thousands more were condemned to permanent and partial disabilities. http://www.bhopal.com/chrono.htm Those chemical plants exist to make agriculture more efficient and cost effective but the very existence in Bhopal took advantage of slack laws, regulations and health and safety measures that were well below the standards of those in the United States. Western Europe and North American restrictions would make it impossible for the Bhopal plant to exist in this part of the world. So while it unlawful to use the same lax manufacturing techniques in the UK or the USA it is perfectly lawful for those companies to exist and sell the products of those factories. In this respect we are benefitting from a cheaper product without the direct environmental consequences because someone else is picking up the slack.
The lowest tier of Maslow Needs is universal to all life. The second tier, however, the need for social security, the need for family, and the need for protection, is altogether uniquely human. Also, while these needs may well be historically correct for a human civilization are the needs of a twenty-first century westerner be identical to those of say an Egyptian peasant in 3000BC, a Roman Centurion in 45AD, or a working class Londoner in 1948? The advancement in technology and living conditions has made it impossible to compare like for like because there has been nothing like this before. The western lifestyle we have grown accustomed to have created more needs that may possibly be need to be shoe-horned between the first and second tiers: The need to communicate, the need to travel, the need to know, the need for money.
As stated above design has been crucial in determining the shape of the world and the condition of human beings. The invention of the printing press made it possible to disseminate information, ideas and images at a more rapid rate than was ever possible before.
The invention of the telegraph meant messages could be sent rapidly over long distances.
Telephone enabled us to speak to people personally to others at length and often.
Automobiles, trains, aeroplanes serve mankind in that we can travel quickly, and relatively cheaply today.
The internet and the World Wide Web have made communication, both one-way and two-way affordable to almost everyone on the planet. We have gotten so used to these products, services and artifacts that they have become more needs than wants. But even then these needs come with a price tag attached.
The cost of driving, flying and ‘training’ is oil, a natural resource that is rapidly dwindling in the west and see-sawing in price if not getting more expensive. Even electric cars or hybrid engines (oil and electric) need to get their power supply from somewhere.
Even the cost of twenty-first communication is not free. While we sit at our computer terminals surfing the internet, sending emails or texting on our mobile phones there is still an environmental price to pay because the servers, the place where these bits and bytes of information are stored, passed through or transmitted need and consume energy, and give off emissions. In 2008 the emissions were equal to that of the entire automobile industry. By 2020 those emissions will be equal to the airline industry.
As if things weren’t bad enough.
The continuing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed over five million lives. Political commentators and aid agencies have claimed that the main cause for the fighting is Congo’s huge wealth of mineral resources one of which is Coltan, a mineral when processed becomes a “vital component in the capacitors that control current flow in cell phone circuit boards.” http://www.cellular-news.com/coltan/
Following is the unedited front end of chapter one Needs and Wants. Oh yeah, I think I'm changing the dissertation title again to: Do we really need it?
In the United Kingdom in 2008 we are inundated with possibilities to consume as much as we can. The whole world’s markets and services seem available to us, if not on the high street then at a touch of a mouse button, via a postal request, through telephone services or even through the television remote control. Are we getting what we need or just what we want? And are our requests and eventual receipt of these products and services really our choice or are others deciding for us?
The American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) formulated a Hierarchy of Needs. His theory states that there are six successive levels of needs that human beings must attain in order to function and feel complete, beginning at the bottom with the most basic needs of air, water and food, and culminating at the top with the need for self actualization – to truly know that your life is complete and you need nothing more. Maslow claimed that it was rare for most to reach that level because humans almost always crave something.
* "I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. The average man is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capacities" http://www.abraham-maslow.com/m_motivation/Self-Actualization.asp
The bottom tier of Maslow’s pyramid (fig 1.1) holds the fundamentals of life, common to all animal life. Maslow contests that humans are unique as a species in that once all the needs are met in one category they seek to fulfill other needs. Each need fulfilled opens up further possibilities: the need for shelter, the need to be loved, the need for sex, the need for status. It could be argued that beyond the need for keeping oneself alive there are no real needs, everything beyond the basics are wants or desires, that is, things that make our lives better. And in the twenty-first century is the second to fifth tier correctly placed.
* Many scholars point out that Maslow’s hierarchy lacks empirical verification. These needs may not always operate in a hierarchy, as Maslow says. For example, esteem needs may still motivate even when lower order needs remain unmet. http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Handouts/Maslow.htm
Since we no longer live in caves and hunt our own food the needs of life in an industrial and technological age, and especially in the western world, are well beyond those of our prehistoric ancestors. But have our needs changed? Do we still desire the same fundamental things? Is the need for social security still more important than the need for self-respect and esteem? How do we meet our needs? And is that getting within our own power? Who ultimately decides what we get in an industrialized free-market western economy in the early twenty-first century?
Design has played a crucial part in shaping the world to human needs. In order to meet our needs we design artifacts and systems, which sustain our lives, make it better and add to its quality and its comfort.
* The world we live in has been shaped in many important ways by human action. We have created technological options to prevent, eliminate, or lessen threats to life and the environment and to fulfill social needs. We have dammed rivers and cleared forests, made new materials and machines, covered vast areas with cities and highways, and decided—sometimes willy-nilly—the fate of many other living things. http://www.project2061.org/publications/sfaa/online/chap8.htm#1
Within an industrialised western democracy it is accepted (and expected) that government make provisions for its citizens’ needs. These citizen needs are inalienable rights, provisions for which are stated in both the United States declaration of Independence, (JULY 4, 1776), and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (August 1789), and are also implied within the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (1949): Life, liberty , freedom, equality, the pursuit of happiness among others.
Governments in a democracy do not grant the fundamental freedoms enumerated by Jefferson; governments are created to protect those freedoms that every individual possesses by virtue of his or her existence. http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/whatsdem/whatdm3.htm
Should it be reasonable to believe, therefore, that systems are put in place that would ensure that at least the first two basic needs –– the need for air and the need for water -- are, while not necessarily provided for but are not intentionally withheld? Of course, as air is naturally occurring and is in boundless supply wherever people live and choose to live it cannot be given or taken away by anyone. However, the quality of air in a given area can be determined by decisions made by industry, transport, urban planning, farming etc, with permission by government.
Problems arise when people, institutions and corporations using their freedom to do as they wish have a direct negative impact on other citizens. A by-product, in this respect, of meeting needs is infringing others’ rights to meet basic needs. We may get what we want but we might also get a lot of stuff we don’t want: unintended but nevertheless, inevitable consequences.
The unintended consequences of industry are numerous and have been since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
* The industrial revolution transformed the ability of humans to affect the world's environment. Deforestation greatly increased on a global scale. So did water pollution from chemical and agricultural discharges into lakes and streams, and atmospheric pollution from combustion of huge amounts of coal. http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/eras/era7.htm
But now that the industrial genie has been released from the metaphorical bottles there may be even more consequences. The negative impact on the environment, through the use of fossil fuels, is still there and has large opposition, but with gas and oil reserves running low the west is dependent on Eastern Europe and the Arab states for supplies. And with the supply out of their control there is the risk of excessive price fluctuations, political crisis or a complete halt in supplies.
Finding a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels has been problematic. Viable alternatives (wind, solar, hydro power), are cleaner and while no harmful by-product exists there is still opposition. Nuclear power, possibly the most efficient source of energy, is the most vilified option. The nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986 has made the public at large, already fearful of nuclear energy, even more concerned that it could happen in their own backyard. http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/chernobyl.html
The public fears of what could happen, however unlikely, determines what is allowed on these shores. We may want to reap the benefits of industry and technology but only if the risk to our lives and livelihoods is minimal. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/feb/15/nuclear.greenpolitics1
Rather more dangerously are catastrophic industrial accidents such as the Union Carbide (UC) disaster. Approximately 3,800 people were killed on that December day when dangerous methylisocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the tanks at the UC pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Thousands more were condemned to permanent and partial disabilities. http://www.bhopal.com/chrono.htm Those chemical plants exist to make agriculture more efficient and cost effective but the very existence in Bhopal took advantage of slack laws, regulations and health and safety measures that were well below the standards of those in the United States. Western Europe and North American restrictions would make it impossible for the Bhopal plant to exist in this part of the world. So while it unlawful to use the same lax manufacturing techniques in the UK or the USA it is perfectly lawful for those companies to exist and sell the products of those factories. In this respect we are benefitting from a cheaper product without the direct environmental consequences because someone else is picking up the slack.
The lowest tier of Maslow Needs is universal to all life. The second tier, however, the need for social security, the need for family, and the need for protection, is altogether uniquely human. Also, while these needs may well be historically correct for a human civilization are the needs of a twenty-first century westerner be identical to those of say an Egyptian peasant in 3000BC, a Roman Centurion in 45AD, or a working class Londoner in 1948? The advancement in technology and living conditions has made it impossible to compare like for like because there has been nothing like this before. The western lifestyle we have grown accustomed to have created more needs that may possibly be need to be shoe-horned between the first and second tiers: The need to communicate, the need to travel, the need to know, the need for money.
As stated above design has been crucial in determining the shape of the world and the condition of human beings. The invention of the printing press made it possible to disseminate information, ideas and images at a more rapid rate than was ever possible before.
The invention of the telegraph meant messages could be sent rapidly over long distances.
Telephone enabled us to speak to people personally to others at length and often.
Automobiles, trains, aeroplanes serve mankind in that we can travel quickly, and relatively cheaply today.
The internet and the World Wide Web have made communication, both one-way and two-way affordable to almost everyone on the planet. We have gotten so used to these products, services and artifacts that they have become more needs than wants. But even then these needs come with a price tag attached.
The cost of driving, flying and ‘training’ is oil, a natural resource that is rapidly dwindling in the west and see-sawing in price if not getting more expensive. Even electric cars or hybrid engines (oil and electric) need to get their power supply from somewhere.
Even the cost of twenty-first communication is not free. While we sit at our computer terminals surfing the internet, sending emails or texting on our mobile phones there is still an environmental price to pay because the servers, the place where these bits and bytes of information are stored, passed through or transmitted need and consume energy, and give off emissions. In 2008 the emissions were equal to that of the entire automobile industry. By 2020 those emissions will be equal to the airline industry.
As if things weren’t bad enough.
The continuing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed over five million lives. Political commentators and aid agencies have claimed that the main cause for the fighting is Congo’s huge wealth of mineral resources one of which is Coltan, a mineral when processed becomes a “vital component in the capacitors that control current flow in cell phone circuit boards.” http://www.cellular-news.com/coltan/
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