Living in a world of design, people’s lives have become incredibly convenient. Comparing to the living quality of people of a few century ago, the many new inventions such as paper, bulb, to the more recent invention of car, airplane, cellphone, and computer, they have totally changed the way we live our lives. However, as our lives become more and more convenient with the improvements of technology the many new inventions and better designs, we still have to pay attention to the “dangerous” of the many newly invented and objects and designs in the future.
The purpose of design is to help us experience our lives in a better way and to help us get rid of the many difficulties in our daily lives from peeling potatoes to traveling to a far a way country. Even though design can improve our lives, it also can be abused. And we have to keep our future designs from becoming dangerous. In my opinion, two kinds of designs in the future can be dangerous which are the one that takes over our ability to create and think and the one that takes over our ability to experience.
What I mean by taking over our ability to create is that we have to be careful to the purpose of design when it comes to helping us create. In the future, there can be things which are over designed or can be used abusively that by relying on them we can gradually lose our ability to create and think. Design should be tools helping we create, but it is not something for taking over our jobs to think and to be creative. It is like using a calculator. Even though calculator is a good tool which does the calculation jobs for us, having the attitude of simply inserting every number and symbol robotically from a given question for an answer without actually thinking and understanding it mathematically can be harmful to us.
Besides the design that are destructive to our creativity, some designs are also dangerous that they take over our ability to experience. As I mentioned, the purpose of design is to help us experience the world, it is not something to experience the world for us. To give an idea of what I mean, I find in the Disney Pixcar cartoon Wall.E, the design of the large spaceship in which people just have to sit on their chairs to be moved to everywhere of the spaceship and experience everything is a good example. As a result, the people in the spaceship became lazy and chubby; and they lost the ability to walk and do exercise. Although it exists just in the cartoon, it can become reality if we don’t pay attention to the danger of designing things that do everything for us.
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