Can the Future Be Designed (Redux)?

Written on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 8:48 am | by cocoy

If a tree fell in the forest and nobody heard it, did it happen? If a man spoke his mind, and no woman heard him, is he still wrong?

There were several things that struck me the last few hours or so, which i think is related to education and intelligence. Sir Ken Robinson made a very moving and superiorly creative case in his TEDTalk on the need to reform the way we think about education and intelligence and how it affects us. The second was sassy lawyer’s “is the world moving too fast for comfort?” Then there was blackshama’s What’s really wrong with Philippine Science?, and What is terribly wrong with the University of the Philippines?, as well as The Jester’s Revamp The Philippine Education System and finally, William McDonough’s presentation on the wisdom of designing Cradle-to-Cradle.

This Age we’ve found ourselves into is spawned by the most amazing technological marvels. We can establish road maps of where technology will be in 18 to 24 months time, where markets will go and what technology will we let go. Our technology has made possible the preservation of food, of better quality of medicine, of better quality living and rising human longevity. Though these gifts may not be universal, it remains a goal to be achieved.

In spite of all this ability, there is much we don’t know. For instance: we don’t know what the next big thing will be. We also don’t know how the world will look like in five years. In 1999, would you have ever imagined living in such a wonderfully connected world or in spite of such technological marvels, how the world is so dark all of a sudden?

When one looked at how the world is, we never really expected it to change because of 9/11. The culture of fear and mistrust is palpable in just every facet of society and a group of people living amongst us is utterly convinced our differences are more important to them than our diversity and a deep gushing wound is so profound that the human spirit throbs with pain.

And now, The World find itself amidst a Financial Crisis that brings back such fond memories of that Great Depression nearly a century ago. Many minds are asking, how do we leap ahead when the storm passes?

Just take a long hard look at this image from James Nachtwey’s TEDTalk presentation:

This man’s will to live shames many of us.

In spite of all this, is the world moving too fast for comfort because at the same time: more people will be educated in University. That means, more people with degrees. Being educated means more economic opportunities. Looking at China, having the most number of people in the world, with improved economic conditions, more and more people will become richer. It should be a marvelous time. This also means competition increases: the balance of power changing and people will be left out in the cold. It also doesn’t mean the quality of human intelligence increases.

Literacy is such an important facet of education. Being able to read, to write, to communicate and to articulate what you’ve got on your mind. Being able to understand and execute instructions and to give them properly is likewise important.

In this Age where the Everyman has such amazing power, and creativity, the latter is increasingly becoming more and more important. So it begs the question, what is creativity? Sir Robinson described creativity as: “the process of having original ideas that have value more often than not comes with the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things” is even more important and must form a complimentary balance with literacy.

Architect William McDonough talked about Cradle-to-Cradle. His methodology is on environmentally intelligent design. Mr. McDonough emphasized this: “Design is a signal of intention”. I guess it would be better for you to look at “Design is a Signal Intention” animation from multimedia Artist Sharif Ezzat for Nuggets of Wisdom, click this short animation:

(image is linked to an animation by Multimedia Artist, Sharif Ezzat )

“design is a signal of intention, but it also has to occur within a world, and we have to understand that world in order to imbue our designs with inherent intelligence. So as we look back at the basic state of affairs in which we design, we in a way need to go to the primordial condition to understand the operating system, and the frame conditions of a planet. I think the exciting part of that is the good news that’s there, because the news is the news of abundance and not the news of limits. And I think as our culture tortures itself now with tyrannies and concerns over limits, and fear, we can add this other dimension of abundance that is coherent, driven by the sun, and start to imagine what that would be like to share”

Design as a signal of intention is a holistic approach to building things, particularly in architecture. We can learn something from it to leverage the future. Across various industries, throughout the strata of human interaction, we are seeing more and more of this mash-up of creative spirit and the interaction of myriad disciplines. The presentations i’ve seen on TED is what Ken Robinson perfectly described as “a celebration of human imagination”. He said we must rethink the way we educate the next generation because the old ways just don’t cut it. Isn’t this the only way to face the challenges on our horizon?

What has architecture, education, intelligence, our challenges today and the future have to do with one another? How are these inter-related? There is something we can do: we can face the future better prepared, as best we can. Everything we do is about design and about our intention. From the the language of our constitution to the policies of our educational system— it is a signal of our intension. What that intension is, we must ask ourselves.

The New York Times recently asked this question, do good grades measure success? A future educational system shouldn’t simply be a matter of things to memorize or grades to earn.

Ken Robinson said it best: “Intelligence is diverse, wonderfully interactive and distinct.” Our intelligence is measured by the combination of various disciplines and the innovation of our creative spirit. For good or ill, our intelligence makes the future unpredictable: for instance, what will we think of next?

I believe the future is something we can design, rather than merely throwing chess pieces at the board. We then need not fear the future to be too fast for us to comprehend or wait for that moment when we can be comfortable with it. We can create and design a tomorrow filled with hope, with innovation and with promise or any which way we so choose. Therefore, the future is something we can envision, can strive for, and though, as with all plans, it may or may not be down to the last precise dot, but it certainly be something we can give it a go and make possible. If design is a signal of intention, and our intention for our future is for a holistic approach that mashes up the disciplines and the creative spirit to form intelligence, therefore, couldn’t a designed future then be leveraged to fight incapacity?

Beyond that and perhaps more importantly, if no one could appreciate the boundless beauty of our world and beyond it, if it would thrive and no one to appreciate it, wouldn’t it be such a shame? if a tree fell and no one noticed, wouldn’t that be a shame? Put it this way: if a tree fell, and the one who saw it couldn’t appreciate it, wouldn’t that be a shame?

[Several posts in the recent days here on FV, have been on education. Thus this is an updated and revised version of “Can the Future Be Designed?” originally posted April 25, 2007.]

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About The Author: cocoy Mac. Linux. Tech. Comics. Free Market. Politics. New Media. Coffee. Geek. He hangs out on twitter as @cocoy, on Plurk, FriendFeed and blogs at Big Mango.

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20 Responses to “Can the Future Be Designed (Redux)?”

  1. BrianB on October 1st, 2008 9:24 am

    You mean no more free market? A world operated by a scientific class? Reminds me of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, which I devoured in one semester in college. I like.

  2. Karl Garcia on October 1st, 2008 10:56 am

    Question:

    Aren’t all designs for the future?

  3. benign0 on October 1st, 2008 11:21 am

    I read somewhere that all the mathematical modelling that financial “engineers” did on all these whiz-bang spreadsheets was what underpinned the hubris that led us The Crash.

    I think emotion and the impulses coming from our reptilian complexes still plays a huge role in how society works and where it is headed.

    Brands for example derive their value from perception rather than on any rational perspective on the true value of the product it represents.

    The financial markets are buoyed (or sunk) by perceptions and people’s confidence in the value perceptions of securities.

    Even simple things like marking a piece of merchandise $9.95 instead of $10 determines how well it sells.

    CEOs running a public company on a 5-year contract will not consider obvious long-term initiatives that tap the collective wisdom of internal personnel and instead hire expensive consulting firms to churn out “high-level” architecture and strategy documents to mark the legacy of his 5-year gig and create a perception in the market that the company is in good hands.

    So there is only so much about our future that we can plan and engineer. The rest is irrevocably left to serendipity. Who would have thought back in the mid to late 90’s that a search engine and an application that linked people together would be the killer app of the mid to late 00’s? Back then the future looked like a world where everyone just stayed at home and ordered pizzas, underwear, and pet food over the Net.

  4. cocoy on October 1st, 2008 11:37 am

    Karl Garcia, some are muddling along design.

    benign0, “The rest is irrevocably left to serendipity.”

    depends i suppose where one is. the world did look like the one you described, unless you were say in Google, Netscape, Red Hat, etc. back in the day. the idealist in me would like to think that the future can be reinvented every day. there are always good ideas. the pragmatic says, the future is always worked hard on. And sometimes, “fate” plays a trick on us so i kinda agree with you as well.

  5. Dean Jorge Bocobo on October 1st, 2008 2:31 pm

    I think it is mystery in the Universe that drives us to design things mainly to solve the problems of discovery and explanation. I’m glad to see you enjoy TEDtalks as I do because this is the central message that I get from almost every talk. But I think the Future itself cannot be designed, as it cannot be foretold, except in the broadest of outlines. The Butterfly Effect is constantly at work and long before we can plan for it, the horizon has already shifted, sometimes radically. Rather we must prepare for it by building on the best that we already know of the past and the present.

    As for Woman, they will be an enduring Mystery. Forsake all sanity, ye who enter there!

  6. BrianB on October 1st, 2008 11:06 pm

    DJB,

    Woman actually flattered by this assessment?

  7. BrianB on October 1st, 2008 11:14 pm

    Cocoy, the world will be designed by someone no matter how others would like to deny it. If it’s not the greed of the few and the power hungry it’s some right-wing religious conspiracy. I think what you’re getting at is that it should be designed according to who could plan for the future best appointed of course in a democratic fashion.

  8. BrianB on October 1st, 2008 11:16 pm

    world (def): one’s world) a person’s life and activities
    • a region or group of countries : the English-speaking world.
    • a period of history : the ancient world.
    • a group of living things : the animal world.

  9. cocoy on October 2nd, 2008 7:35 pm

    djb, brianb, all true– though i respectfully remain silent re: women. heheh.

    If design is a signal of intention, and our intention for our future is for a holistic approach that mashes up the disciplines and the creative spirit to form intelligence, therefore, couldn’t a designed future then be leveraged to fight incapacity?

    Beyond that and perhaps more importantly, if no one could appreciate the boundless beauty of our world and beyond it, if it would thrive and no one to appreciate it, wouldn’t it be such a shame? if a tree fell and no one noticed, wouldn’t that be a shame? Put it this way: if a tree fell, and the one who saw it couldn’t appreciate it, wouldn’t that be a shame?

    the future i speak of is also about education and that we need a population that is smarter than we are now. But beyond smart— one that is truly intelligent and one that can construe the universe better and one that can appreciate it in all its grandiose beauty.

  10. Bencard on October 3rd, 2008 3:10 am

    design our future? sounds like straight from orwellian world of “war is peace and peace is war”, where “truth” can be managed or controlled.

    until and unless man’s free will is successfully eliminated, social engineering, i believe, doesn’t have an iota of a chance to succeed.

  11. cvj on October 4th, 2008 12:18 pm

    design our future? sounds like straight from orwellian world of “war is peace and peace is war”, where “truth” can be managed or controlled. - Bencard

    …this coming from a lawyer who does not believe that Gloria Arroyo cheated unless it is ‘proven’ in a Philippine court of law.

  12. Bencard on October 4th, 2008 10:09 pm

    cvj, do you a better way of finding “truth”? let’s have it, man, but don’t give me your speculations, gossips, contrived polls, delusions, suborned “witnesses” and stink “bombs” courtesy of the likes of panfilo lacson, cayetano, et al.

  13. The Jester-in-Exile on October 5th, 2008 12:22 am

    what is “truth”?

    (five gets you twenty this question is famous. :D )

  14. Bencard on October 5th, 2008 1:24 am

    jester, in human context, “truth” is the one that convicts a criminal “beyond reasonable doubt”, the one which determines that one party has a “better” right than the other, or one that proves whether a witness is telling the “truth” or is lying to his teeth. if you have a problem with that, try dying and if you are deserving maybe, just maybe, God will show you the Divine Truth.

  15. Bencard on October 5th, 2008 1:36 am

    btw, jester, you owe me 2 grand (u.s.$). i owe you a hundred bucks which you can deduct from MY money. confirm this and i’ll give you an address where you can remit the amount.

  16. The Jester-in-Exile on October 5th, 2008 2:32 am

    bencard, the bet was whether or not the question is famous.

    the correct answer is: pontius pilate, interrogating a son of a jewish carpenter. :D

    (oh, do recheck your math :D)

  17. Bencard on October 5th, 2008 3:30 am

    jester, i know about pontious pilate asking that question before washing his hand. but isn’t it clear you were looking for an answer to that question, not whether it was “famous”? anyway, sigue, lusot ka na.

    forgot to mention, the $1600 is for atty. fees (lol).

  18. The Jester-in-Exile on October 5th, 2008 6:54 am

    atty’s fees? that much? maaaaaaan. maybe i should consider working towards practicing there!

    but seriously now, i’m more interested in exploring cocoy’s idea that interdisciplinarity should be the way to go with regards to our education. does anyone remember carl sagan’s contact or michael crichton’s sphere, and their descriptions of their teams’ members? perhaps our old ways of education cannot really cut the mustard.

  19. cocoy on October 5th, 2008 11:54 am

    bencard,

    “until and unless man’s free will is successfully eliminated, social engineering, i believe, doesn’t have an iota of a chance to succeed.”

    but we do social engineering everyday. we simply call it “civilization”. men follow rules all the time. we even have rules on where to cross the street. we change behavior all the time. For example, slavery isn’t the norm anymore. being environmentally friendly is the norm now, rather than a few years ago when we’d all be calling ‘em, “treehugging”.

    i agree with you, with respect to cvj’s gma jab and re: truth.

  20. Frustration and Tomorrow | Filipino Voices on November 23rd, 2008 6:50 am

    […] October, I blogged about “Can the Future Be Designed (Redux)?” In that post, I raved about do schools kill creativity, by Sir Ken Robinson, among other things. […]

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