Design education in the post-digital age

Design Management Journal, Summer 2002 by Maeda, John

Ben Fry and Casey Reas have also released a second-generation system called Proce55ing that reduces the restrictions of DBN and introduces three-dimensional graphics processing (figure 8). This development effort is now shared between MIT and Interaction Institute Design Ivrea, a new design institute located in Italy, on whose faculty Casey Reas now resides. This system will have great implications for both refining and expanding the possibilities for high-quality digital content.

The Nylon system, by Megan Galbraith, Simon Greenwold, and Justin Manor, will be available by the time this article is published. Nylon intends to introduce an open-source hardware development kit to enable aggressive experimentation with physical computing systems (figure 9). This low-cost, build-it-yourself computing environment will serve as a platform for sketching scenarios of digitally enhanced product, interior, and architectural designs.

"How is this approach different from that of any Adobe or Macromedia product?" is the question commonly asked regarding our educational software initiatives. The answer is: All our systems are designed to be transient and disposable. It's the same intent that leads to the use of training wheels as you learn to ride a bicycle. And most important, all our developments are free.

The ACG represents a small community of people who can demonstrate freed constraints from existing digital design tools while simultaneously providing pathways for more people to free themselves, as well. I believe that the impact of the ACG will be felt most over the next decade as students from this program actively engage in design education worldwide.

Humans in a post-digital world

In a 1997 Design Management Journal issue on interactivity, Dan Boyarski concludes his definition of interactivity by saying, "Human-tohuman communication-still the richest form of communication around! Let's keep it that way." In the same issue, Lauralee Alben echoes the sentiment that human qualities should be the underlying theme of our digital landscape. At first glance, such opinions seem out of step with the digital revolution. Over the past decade, the one strand of hope in digital media has always been that of interactivity. Much of my early work in "reactive" graphics foresaw many of the dynamic possibilities of the computer screen. I sought to find an ideal form of visual expression that transcended human interactivity through the versatile and powerful means of the interactive computer. However, I find that with all the speed, flexibility, and power afforded by the technology that underlies today's digital reality, I wonder what kind of interactivity might appear in the upcoming post-digital world. Futurecasters tell us that the next step is to upload our brains to the computer and discard our bodies. Such a future cannot be worth living, and perhaps that is the point for some people. Technological developments will undoubtedly lead us to the opposite direction-- away from real human concerns-and thus we should take Boyarski's and Alben's words to heart more than ever. Only by regaining control of technology can design and art establish a safe and relevant future for humanity. Through better educating future generations of artists and designers, we can achieve a future worth looking forward to in this new post-digital age.