Design as a semiotic integrative practical experience is a matter of both communication and context. The possibility to customize a message so that it is addressed not to an anonymous group (the believers gathered for the occasion, or members of society eager to learn about political decisions affecting their lives), but to each individual, reflecting concern for each one's individual condition and respect for his or her contribution in a system of distributed tasks, was opened by design. The semiosis of group and mass communication is very different from the semiosis of pointcasting. Technologically, everything is available for this individualized communication. However, it does not occur because of the implicit literate expectation in the functioning of church, state, education, commerce and other institutions. Design experiences submit the centrality of the writer to reassessment. One relates to the literate model of one-to-many communication. This model is based on the assumption of hierarchy, within a context of sequential interaction (the word is uttered, the listener understands it, reacts, etc.). In the industrial pragmatic framework, this was an efficient model. Perfected through the experience of television, it reached globality. But scale is not only sheer numbers. More important are interactions, intensities, the efficient matching of each individual's needs and expectations. Thus, efficiency no longer means how many individuals are at the receiving end of the communication channel, but how many channels are necessary to effectively reach everyone. A different design can change the structure of communication and introduce participatory elements. For those still captive to literacy, the alternative is the ubiquitous word-processed letter matched to a list in a database. For those able to re-think and reformulate their goals, effectiveness means transcending the literate structure.
The challenge begins at knowing the language of the individuals, mapping their characteristics (cognitive, emotional, physical), and addressing them specifically. The result of this effort is represented by individualized messages, addressing in parallel people who are concerned about similar issues (environment, education, the role of the family). Moreover, it is possible to have many people write together, or to combine one person's text with someone else's image, with animation, spoken words, or music. In the design effort that takes the lead here, hierarchies are abolished, and new interactions among people are stimulated. The design that leads to such patterns of human experiences must free itself from the constraints of sequentiality. Such design can no longer be subject to the duality of good or bad, as frequently related to form (in particular, typography, layout, coherence). Rather, it covers a continuum between less appropriate to very well adapted to the scope of the activity. No longer cast in metal, wood, or stone, but left in a soft condition (as software or as a variable, self-adaptive set of rules), the design can improve, change, and reach its optimum through many contributions from those who effectively constitute their identity interacting with it. The user can effectively finish the design by choosing identifiers and modifying, within given limits, the shape, color, texture, feel, and even function of the artifact.
There is also a deeper level of knowing the language of the individuals addressed. At this level, to know the language means to know the experience. Henceforth, the new design no longer takes place at a syntactic or a semantic level, but is pragmatically driven. To reach every individual means to constitute a context for a significant practical experience: learning, participation in political decisions, making art, and many others. But let us be realistic as we experience the urge to convey a sense of optimism: the common practical experience involves partaking in the distribution of the wealth and prosperity generated in this extremely efficient pragmatic framework. As discouraging as this might sound, in the last analysis, consumption, extremely individualized, constitutes the most engaging opportunity for efficient pointcasting. The questions entertained today by visionaries, innovators, and venture capitalists placing their bets on the Internet might not always make this conclusion clear.
Convergence and divergence
Telecommunications, media, and computation converge. What makes the convergence possible and necessary is a combination of factors united in the necessity to reach efficiency appropriate to human practical experiences at the global scale of existence and work. It is within this broad dynamics and inner dynamics that design ascertains itself as a force for change from the civilization of literacy to the civilization of many, sometimes contradictory, literacies. A shirt used to be mere clothing; the T-shirt became, in view of many concurrent forces, a new icon, a sui generis medium of communication. The commercial aspect is obvious. For example, each university of certain renown has licensing arrangements with some manufacturer who advertises the name on the walking billboards of chests, backs, and bellies. The T-shirt effectively replaces wordy press statements and becomes an instance of live news. Before Operation Desert Storm got into full swing, the T-shirt already signaled love for the troops or, alternatively, anti-war sentiment. Magic Johnson's admission that he had tested HIV positive was followed, less than two days later, by the "We still love you" T- shirts in Los Angeles.
The quasi-instantaneous annotation of events is in keeping with the fast change of attitudes and expectations. Institutions have inertia; they cannot keep up with the rhythm of the times. The news, formed and conveyed outside the institution of media, reads as a manifesto of immediacy, but also as a testimony to ephemerality. We actually lose our shirts on the immediate, not on the permanent. Design projects this sense of immediacy and ephemerality not only through T-shirts or the Internet. The house, clothes, cars, the Walkman, everything is part of this cycle. Is design the cause of this, or is it something else, expressed through design, or to which designers become accomplice? The shorter fashion cycles, the permanent renewal of design forms, the 30-second drama or comedy of advertisement-more appropriate to the rhythms of existence than never-ending soap-operas-the new VLSI board, the craze for designer non-alcoholic beer or low-fat pork-all testify to a renewal speed met by what seems an inexhaustible appetite on the side of our current commercial democracy. The refresh rate of images on our TV sets and computer monitors, predicated by the intrinsic characteristics of technology and human biology, is probably the extreme at which cycles of change can settle.
To take all this with enthusiasm or trepidation, without understanding why and how it happens, would contradict the basic assumption pursued in this book. The pragmatic context of high efficiency is also one of generalized democracy, extended from production to consumption. The ubiquitous engine driving the process is the possibility, indeed necessity, of human emancipation from all possible constraints. The experience of design acknowledges that emancipation from constraints does not ultimately result in some kind of anarchic paradise. The right to partake in what human experiences generate often takes the form of taste that is equalized and rendered uniform, and of ever-expanding choices that ultimately turn out be mediocre.
As a reaction to the implicit system of values of literacy, related to limited choices, illiterate design expression does not impose upon the user in design, but involves the user in choices to be made. In this way, design becomes an indicator of the state of public intelligence, taste, and interest. It also points to a new condition of values. The indicator might not always show a pretty picture of who we are, and what our priorities are. The honest interpretation of such an indicator can open avenues to understanding why the Walkman-which seems to seduce people by an ideal of insulation from others-has the success it has, why some fashion designs catch on and others don't, why some car models find acceptance, why movies on significant themes fail, and why, on a more general level, quality does not necessarily improve under circumstances of expectations in continuous expansion. New thresholds are set by each new design attempt. The wearable computer is yet another gadget in the open- ended development that unites evolution and revolution.
The need to achieve high levels of efficiency corresponding to the current human scale is probably the aspect most ignored. Efficiency, pre-programmed through design, confirms that human involvement is expensive (do-it-yourself dominates at all levels of design), and service more profitable than manufacturing in developed countries. None of these solutions can be taken lightheartedly. After all, design bridges to the future, and to bridge to a world of depleted resources, destroyed ecology, and a mediocre human condition is not necessarily a good reason for optimism. The goal of reducing human involvement, especially when the human is forced into exhausting and dangerous experiences, is very attractive, but also misleading. To reduce human involvement, energies different from those of an individual involved in experiences of self-constitution as a user need to be provided. Faced with the challenge posed by the dualistic choice expectations vs. resources, designers often fail to free themselves from the literate ideology of dominating nature. Fortunately, design based on co-evolution with nature is gaining momentum. So is the design of materials endowed with characteristics usually associated with human intelligence.
The inherent opposition between means and goals explains the dynamics of design in our time. Extremely efficient methods of communication lead to information saturation. New methods for designing result in an apparent overabundance of artifacts and other products of design. It seems that the driving force is the possibility to practically meet individual expectations at levels of productivity higher than those of literacy-based mass production, and at costs well below those of mass production. The challenge-how to maintain quality and integrity-is real and involves more than professional standards. Market-specific processes, probably well reflected in the notion of profit, affect design decisions to the extent that often human practical experiences in the market result in under-designing or over-designing negotiated items. Changing expectations, as a consequence of rapidly changing contexts of human experiences, affect the design cycle even more than the production cycle. The ability to meet such changes by a built-in design variability is, however, not only a test of design, but also of its implicit economic equation.