[[zhdk]], [[Sweet dreams are made of this]]

John Thackara. 2006. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. MIT Press. Excerpt.

• Design has wide reaching implications, as many products and services are influenced by design decisions

• [[Design politics|Design decisions]] / Design is politics: Influences use of material, shape, process, energy, how they are operated and also what to do when the product is no longer needed

• Herb Simon: Everyone designs if they take actions aiming at changing the existing state into a [[Future|preferable]] one

• Papanek: Design is a human activity, any action towards a desirable goal

• [[Technology]] dominates [[Society]], it tries to answer everything. It has become overwhelming, become unclear what it is the answer to, what value it adds to our lives.

• Thackara describes technology as almost pollution, as there is too much without clear intent.

• People were put under technological advancement that destroyed [[traditions]], [[cultures]] and ([[indigenous]]) wisdoms (as they are seen as backwards)

• Biotech is criticised for being super optimistic while delivering no concrete results (so is to a certain degree [[Biodesign]])

• Need change focus back to people, before tech. Thackara calls it designing people back into situations. ==Priority to human agency.==

• Technological and [[Politics|political]] advancement supposed to be for the good of people, but most of the time, people are marginalised and only a small group benefits

• Shift from products/things to events that gather and benefit more people, like [[workshops]] and design activities

• Even small design decisions have big impacts, as like politics it influences everything in everyday life

• Design mindfulness: being sensitive to context, relationship and consequence when designing

• [[Design service|Service]] not things

• Create social alternatives

• Be in the bubble but also outside of it, gain perspective

Lilly Irany. 2015. ‘Justice for Data Janitors’ in PublicBooks.org

• Technology often promises new work and wealth, but often it takes away jobs and outsources tasks to cheap human labour, making wealthy only those who own the tech/[[Machine|machines]].
• “[[Automation]] doesn’t replace labour, it displaces it”
• Making [[AI]] work, a lot of human labour is necessary, as the machine only learns what it has been told
• Invention of washing machine raised standard of cleanliness, so domestic workers had to work (clean) even harder
• ==“Computers were women”==, reference at the work women used to do (calculating in offices)
• Amazon Mechanical Turk: how a lot of automation still works today. A computer generates a script and a worker has to execute it (example Amazon Warehouse). Like this, the worker has no room for creative problem solving or any [[agency]] and is just doing what the machine tells him
• One directional way of command is unflexible, as there is no [[Feedback loop]], no exchange of experience between worker and manager.
• Automation is not the problem but the relationship it creates.
• There is no place for humans / human factor, so machines have a big impact in the social ecology
• It’s all the dirty work, just without having the workers (in your countrry)
• One solution Iran proposes is an income guarantee, so workers don’t have to accept jobconditions like these