I Wonder About Technology

Right off the bat, I'm going to violate my own rule and give a citation. Rawlins (Slaves of the Machine, MIT Press) describes the operational principle of the computer by comparing it to an irrigation project:

"An electrical current is really a river of electrons, and each one of the millions of tiny decision-making boxes inside a computer chip is like a sluice gate controlling whether electrons will flow through it. So a computer chip is a giant electron irrigation project laid out on a nearly flat plane, with microscopic hydraulic plants, wells, water tanks, and pumps, and millions of canals and sluice gates--enormous complexity working at enormous speeds and tucked into an enormously small space" (p.28)

Hillis (The Pattern on the Stone, 1998) uses a similar metaphor:

"The picture I have in my mind when I design a logic circuit is of hydraulic valves. A hydraulic valve is like a switch that controls and is controlled by the flow of water. Each valve has three connections: the input, the output, and the control. Pressure on the control connection pushes the piston that turns off the water flow from input to output". (p. 13)

An irrigation project works because natural forces of gravity press the water through the gates and ditches. Technology in this case consists of pre-arranging the paths by which the water flows. The same is true in a computer.

I take this as a pattern for all of technology. When human intention is exercised in any way to influence the flow of natural forces, I call that the application of technology. 

This notion has immense implications that are lost on many technologists. And since design is the way we decide how to make those impositions of our will on natural forces, I believe that designers should make this understanding the beginning point of their cogitations on design.   

I Wonder Where This Will Go

When you place something online you become an iceberg. You hang there in the water with only a tip exposed and wonder whether there will ever be interest in the rest. A blog exposes what's below the water line a little at a time and hopes for a discerning and generous reader. Worst case, it becomes a kind of journal that records impressions for your own later use.

I'm a designer by nature and by profession. I will probably write about that. I'm an academic too, but I find that in my field of study the academics haven't gotten to the most interesting and important questions. Maybe I'll write about them here and enjoy freedom from the multitude of citations that are normally used to give authority to what you say.  Saying it then will be its own authority.