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Michele shared with me this great thought about design. That the way to evaluate a designed object was not by how good it is, but only by how bad it was or wasn’t. In this case a cell phone. The proper way to think of whether your mobile suits you is this simple metric: how many times a day / a week do you feel the urge to smash it with a hammer?
In today’s world of ever more complex designed technology (and associated fragility) a good or successful object might be defined as one you only feel such hammercidal tendencies some of the time.
Intermission:
I’ve long had (since I was young, and trying to keep up with “smart” kids in class) similar suspicion about the definition of human intelligence. There’s really no such thing as a perfectly smart. The term really doesn’t even make sense. It’s more a matter of failing to be particularly dumb with any notable regularity. It seems to me that all of us people are just not dumb (or not unreasonably slow) with varying degrees of success and consistency. How many hammers per day are you?
photo credit: GoodbyePolaroid
So the Land of Suck outside of the Zone of Possible is so sucky that it’s not even possible to be that sucky?
So the Land of Suck outside of the Zone of Possible is so sucky that it’s not even possible to be that sucky?
You’ve got it! There’s a zones in the space of suck (just as with awesome) that we would have to invent whole new technologies or media just to reach.
You know this to be true intuitively, because every time any new media is invented, somebody somewhere, if not many people will find ways to make things that suck in ways you had imagined.
I would put “Web 2.0 tag clouds” or “Comic Sans MS”, “nuclear war” or “Nickleback” for example in these categories. I’m sure you can name others.
Any new media tends to expand the “zone of the possible” which can be great, but unfortunately it can tend to do so somewhat indiscriminately and uniformly in the directions that you’d want.
You’ve got it! There’s a zones in the space of suck (just as with awesome) that we would have to invent whole new technologies or media just to reach.
You know this to be true intuitively, because every time any new media is invented, somebody somewhere, if not many people will find ways to make things that suck in ways you had imagined.
I would put “Web 2.0 tag clouds” or “Comic Sans MS”, “nuclear war” or “Nickleback” for example in these categories. I’m sure you can name others.
Any new media tends to expand the “zone of the possible” which can be great, but unfortunately it can tend to do so somewhat indiscriminately and uniformly in the directions that you’d want.
what do you mean how many hammers am I? How many hammers are a good number? Is this something explained in web 3.0? why hammers? why not thumbtacks? Your blog makes my brain hurt.
what do you mean how many hammers am I? How many hammers are a good number? Is this something explained in web 3.0? why hammers? why not thumbtacks? Your blog makes my brain hurt.