A belief that design that communicates its utility to the poorest 90% of the world will take precedence, and that mass design collaborations will serve a vaster public than professional designers have ever reached. This future of design would be world-changing and would mark a new direction for the practice of design . . . one that might not require designers.
Much has been made of the consequences of democratizing design. Already, the designer’s responsibility has shifted from creating objects and experiences to creating the conditions for innovation – putting into the hands of the masses the tools to make their own designs. However, the threat to the livelihood of designers may well go beyond packs of online amateurs.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that $1,000 worth of computation in the 2020s will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain. The result? By 2020, greatly extended human longevity (and a cure for the common cold, thank God); by 2030, nanobots that can repair our bodies on the fly; by 2040, machine back-ups of human memories. In the same timeframe, we’ll spend less time in front of computers and more time inside of them, working and playing in virtual worlds.
2008.05.31 at 11:00 pm
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