The Politics of the Artificial, Chapter One

What I read

In the first chapter of this book, Margolin presents his experiences—primarily summaries of talks—at a conference about design at the edge of the millennium.

Margolin begins by describing the context of the symposium, which was held at Cooper Union in January of 1992. The conference included designers, architects, historians, theorists, and academics, and discussed architecture, products, graphics, and computing. He describes that, overall, there was no consensus about how to characterize design, and that was a benefit of the experience. Michael Barkun, the second speaker (and keynote), described that people were disillusioned with technology and this would ultimately lead to the appeal of small-town life.

Next, Margolin describes the section of the conference that focused on architecture. A variety of perspectives are summarized, presented as an intermingling of what Margolin perceived, and what Margolin felt about the presentation (in both style—demeanor of the presenter—and content.) There was no conclusion made about the various talks about architecture.

Margolin then describes the section of the conference that focused on “the semantics and pragmatics of product design.” Again, the style was a combination of Margolin’s observations and summaries, as well as his opinion of the content and delivery style. One theme described is the contextualization of product in a corporate environment. Another is the nature of products as visual descriptors of the world (as is the case with semantics, “a recent theory that explores product meaning.” There are some references to the nature of capitalism as a backdrop for product design, and Margolin notes positive reflection from speakers like Branzi on the optimism of design and the role it plays in shaping modern society. This is juxtaposed to Margolin’s summary of McDonough’s presentation, which he viewed as cynical.

The third topic of the conference focused on virtual worlds. Bruce Sterling introduced cyberspace, and Margolin notes his emphasis on the political (specifically, libertarian) focus Sterling champions for a virtual world. Don Norman’s talk is then discussed, although it’s unclear why Norman’s work was presented in a theme on virtuality. Work from Xerox Parc described ubiquitous computing, but Margolin viewed the business-style presentation as lacking.

The last theme of the conference was focused on modernist practice and diversity. The speakers were positioned by Margolin as presenting a rejection of modernism, due to cultural distinctions and gender distinctions, but Margolin indicates that the presentations were insufficient in providing a comprehensive narrative.

Finally, Margolin summarizes his takeaways from the conference: that “those who participate in the discourse about design and the built environment do not share a common vision of what constitutes our contemporary condition.” He feels that this disconnect exemplifies the cultural context in which the conference was held.

What I learned and what I think

I originally read this book early in my career (although I don’t remember exactly when—likely during the first few years of teaching at SCAD, so approximately 2003ish; it was published in 2002.) I don’t remember it at all, and so I selected it to read now because a) I’m exhausted by the focus on creativity in a cognitive psychology context, b) I’m finding my way back to design, probably inevitably, as the output of my interest in creativity, and c) the reference to Herb Simon in the last article made me think of the Science of the Artificial, which led me to remember this one. I’ll try to work my way through it.

But: what a bizarre way to start a book. The chapter is a retrospective account of Margolin’s experience at a conference. It’s a blog post on going to a conference, except that there was no outlet for this form of readout: no blog, no web, no direct voice-to-readers. It reads just like a blog post, as it has a rough form of synthesis, mixed with polemic commentary. At one point, Margolin describes that Don Norman’s, “presentation was one of the leastsuccessful of the symposium due to his unwillingness to come to terms withthe ideas of most of the other speakers” and that Michael Thomas’s talk was “simply a curmudgeon’s complaint about the evils of the present.” For me, this highlights the void that the interweb filled, as it provided a much more casual format for this type of public reflection (just like my site here.)

The chapter offered me a chance for reflection on a few other things. First, the way the early 90s are characterized seems aimless, as if there is a romanticized “very clear” set of cultural themes present in previous decades, but this one was just a misdirected hodgepodge. I’m ignorant of how the previous decades actually felt because I wasn’t born (and I wasn’t “formed” enough in the 90s to really understand the context of what was happening in the world), but I know that looking back gives us the ability to frame the past in a nice box, labeling styles and tendencies and generational perspectives.

The architecture conversation is out of my depth, but the design conversation is not, and I think the lack of themes present in the moment are actually well formed into a nice box in a historic lookback. That is, the 90s are when design and manufacturing “grew up” (not necessarily in a good way), and when the next wave of technology blew through everything (not necessarily in a good way.) I know the “information age” has been called a second or third or fourth industrial revolution, and that’s cute; the 90s, though, really was a mess of trying to figure out the rudimentary nature of digital. I’m glad I was figuring out my life in that time, because all of the characters in the story here are ones I either know personally and helped form the way I view design, or are people that were the myths of discussion that shaped my ability to compare and contrast what I liked and didn’t like.

I need to synthesize this with my evolving perspectives on “user experience” and the implosion of that professional fad, and with the ai thrust. I’ll keep working through this book, because if I remember correctly, there’s depth to it when he starts to compare design with Herb Simon’s thinking; that’s really the lens around creativity and design as problem solving that I’m most interested in pushing on.

After; I looked up Margolin, who I met years ago. I didn’t realize he died in 2019.