Navigating in the Twenty-First Century: The Questions Concerning Technology in Design

In the current digital cosmos, the inclusion of cybernetics has become very pertinent in the realm of design. Be it digital or analog, practicing/learning design is considered incomplete, without integrating technology to our so-called design solutions. Martin Heidegger, in 1954, engaged us with the idea of cause, effect, and impacts of technology on our own existence and opened up a chance to think about nature and its implications on various applications of the same. His concerns regarding the “enframing” of the “means” are very relevant even in the design education/practice in this experience age we are in. Technology is not, or shouldn’t be merely a means to do some task or a way of revealing our cosmos. But instead, as designers and philosophers, it’s high time we use the same to understand and find our own way to perceive how this world works and experience it. Cybernetics allows this more efficiently in a place where design is so much intertwined with newer technologies we have. With a clever comprehension of this, and the focus on systems of control and feedback loops, cybernetics make use of the potential for better design expressions and solutions. Especially in this era of consumerism, fast fashion and ever increasing digitality, where everyone wants to be an “achievement-subject”, Design, as an act of philosophical and creative form of expression, is at a great amount of risk of being reduced to a mere tool or a means-to-an-end, driven and evaluated just by the scale of its efficiency and usability. Thus, this essay reimagines the questions-concerning-technology in the context of design practices and education in India considering its socio-economic disparities and then understands and learns how cybernetic technologies can help us tackle the challenges of this century, resulting in, shaping the world to be active participants engaging with technology, instead of just consumers of products and services.