Essay

My essay question is;

Is our history of technology design having an adverse effect on its future? Is our rate of progress being slowed by our dependency on tradition and convention?

I originally got the interest in the changing of designs from the 20th century to the present day, I am interested in design after the second world war and during the cold war, how was development of technology politically motivated? This goes way back to January when I went to the V & A Museum. I also found the rise of the 1990's interesting, the way in which products were designed were also effected by huge advances in technology. Also the huge communicative power in design was recognised from anti-consumerism, AIDS and environmental activists.

I have researched old quotes and footage from the 1950's to see what predications were made back then and too see how far we have come with those in the 21st century:

I wanted to look at why these things like some shown in this clip have not come about yet, have countries such as Japan who are the lead in future design had to stop designing due to not enough sales. I was interested in the development of technology such as telephones, home computer and television from the early days to now.

The difference in the design process, for example the discovery of streamlining which is significant to the shell and style of today's technology. Why designers design the way they do today, the problems they face such as products that don't work as mentioned in Don Norman's Book - the Design of Everyday Things. Also John Heskett's book - Industrial Design took a look at why designs were made and how this applies to today. John Maeda - Laws of Simplicity and Product Design by Graeme Vickers helped me understand how important it is to sell a product if it is kept simple. I was interested to research the marketing and advertisement changes from the past such as computer games.

The final part of the essay, I researched robots and how technology today communicates with us, do we feel comfortable with that. Technology today is starting to develop personalities such as AIBO, ASIMO, Roomba as well as NeCoRo and Actroids: