Y SIN EMBARGO magazine

Our society seems to be locked into a position in which the user’s and voter’s choices determine how we shall live in the future. A disturbing collective urban life in a giant Big Brother House looms, a material and social world in which sensationalistic media and its commercial translation dominate. Our senses of what is real and what is quality is on the verge of collapse. The practice and education of the engineers of this society is determined by short-term effect instead of long-term social responsibility. Culture becomes little more than a market, politics it’s façade and the city its stage. Instead of reviving old school high modernist social engineering or claiming the need for an intellectual junta, we solicit new forms of social engineering where we all have a chance to participate with out ideas, creativity and opinions. Where shall this new way of future designing lead?

Bellow are fragments from A.Bullen’s article, taken from Volume #16, issue ‘Engeneering society: to beyond or not to be‘ (volumeproject.org/) (it’s an independent quarterly magazine that sets the agenda for thinking about architecture, global creative communication and social development. )

MEDIA LABS AND OPEN SOCIETIES, Andrew Bullen

“Media are powerful. Digital media represents a uniquely powerful and pervasive tool, capable of exerting a profound effect on all aspects of human progress through the creation, application and distribution of new social or cultural value and identity. Digital media can promote democratization, empowerment, cross disciplinary collaboration and can redefine the meaning of community. In other words, media play a crucial role in creating social and cultural value and identity. Those professionally engaged in media research and development often describe their places of work as media ‘labs’. The use of the word ‘lab’ is significant: a place where media are subjected to some scientific experimentation and social or cultural exploration.
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Media labs should help discuss values, conditions and methods critical to shaping or ‘engineering’ the future. The vision and design of the future should be people-shaped, open, fluid and interdisciplinary, a creative community or interactive agora which enables dialogue between all parties, articulates real human needs and provides a common culture to design and problem solve together. A task as existential as designing the future should be left neither to brilliant individuals, however creative, nor political lobbyists, however powerful. Engineering society for a complex world must be a participatory affair, drawing in all pertinent disciplines and social layers.
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We live in an increasingly multilayered, multi-cultural society. The question Edward Lorenz posed as a basis for his Chaos theory, ‘does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?’, no longer seems as provocative or far-fetched in these days of environmental and sustained awareness as it may have in 1972. Equally, the understanding of social and cultural diversity and the positive potential force of this identity is a critical factor in the further progress, indeed the survival of the mankind. A biotope needs to maintain an equilibrium of biodiversity to survive. In the same way, society needs to understand, promote and integrate diversity of culture if it is to flourish.
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The online world is a rapidly growing, public space with an unprecedented level of communication and information flow where users take a significant interest in their digital and physical surroundings and express their feelings and ideas with creativity and engagement. We are living in the time when citizens increasingly participate in creative processes. Social networks are recognized as a critical marketing factor and new forms of peer-to-peer networking and communication are giving rise to a new paradigm for learning. Bloggers can spark the rise or fall of major politicians. Wikipedia-type information sources are challenging the hegemony of closed and proprietary systems. Even eminent, traditional broadcasters like BBC now openly distribute their precious video contents to be further co-developed by their enthusiastic end-users. Indeed, Creative Digital Industries could not exist without cohorts of ‘creating’ and users. These users make up an increasingly significant part of a new diverse and innovative supply chain comprising not only creative professionals, but also traditional consumers, clients and communities. This is the dawn of the user as co-creator and that process is made more effective by digital interactive channels and various social ‘labs’.”

Some examples:
1 - www.picnicnetwork.org
2 - www.symposium2008.ca
3 - www.strax.tkk.fi/lens.htm
4 - www.humbertoschwab.net/bok/About
5 - www.partizanpublik.nl/index.php?page_id=3&product_id=0&project_id=47
6 - www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
7 - sandbox.uclan.ac.uk/
8 - realtime.waag.org/

Por Brancolina para Y SIN EMBARGO magazine.

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