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sorry do we have any non designers in
the room anyone that doesn't have design
ahead time so essentially as saying in
systems this talk got really weird I
wanted to make them more practical these
topics and the subject matter isn't
really it's hard to communicate so those
it's gonna see when we go that's my
clarify something as well when I say
native etherion design language I'm not
talking about a design system which is
the system ization of interface
components I'm talking about a
generative language in the same way that
we have English for something like that
how can we create composable generative
elements that actually create a design a
process of design but they can be
adapted to a to a complex system sounds
totally normal
cool so the situation so basically we
invented the internet mid 90s in submit
Macmillan century and really shaped it
to our world so it's a product about
were like to that point and then sort of
with the invention of the World Wide Web
1992 berners-lee we arrived at some of
the consumer friendly Internet I mean
incentivized us to feed in our
information I mean in transform from
being a space so a destination that you
actually visit to being fused with the
very sort of information systems about
civilization and then obviously
everything that happened after 2016 was
a catalyst for us thinking and trying to
question what's happening with these
systems what is happening with the
internet how is it how is it reshaping
society how is it reshaping a
civilization and so my question is my
fourth one of these bullets has been
essentially aetherium and the related
technologies and not so much of an
invention of atomic and friends an
inevitable emergent expression of the
Internet itself with vitally etc as a
medium for which this was expressed
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another way to think about this is that
for the longest time we've had a sort of
a simulated reality in the computer and
actually
which lived but quoting Paul Edwards is
an academic that studies and lectures in
society and technology studies he says
programming can produce strong
sensations of power and control because
the computer produces an internally
consistent
if externally incomplete microworld a
simulated world entirely within the meat
machine itself so that is where most
tools produce effects on a wider level
in which they are only upon the computer
contains its own worlds in miniature in
the micro world as in children's
make-believe the power of the program is
absolute and the problem is that now as
the Internet has started to interface
with these systems of society the
simulated reality of the computer is
brittle and it can't handle it is not
capable of adapting and responding to
the pressures and the challenges that
it's now facing and the best way to
phrase this I think is in this essay a
childhood and they came out on January
1st this year by George Dyson basically
says that the genius sometimes
deliberate sometimes exit out of the
enterprises now on such a steep ascent
is that they have found their way
through the looking-glass and emerged as
something else the models are no longer
models the search engine is no longer a
model of human knowledge
it is human knowledge what began as a
mapping of human meaning now defines
human meaning and has begun to control
rather than simply catalog or index
human thought no one is at the controls
so this is basically my vibe we live in
an age of planetary computing we've
reached the limits of design and that
there
might help us extend them or another way
of explaining it how do we get to galaxy
brain design all right so just an
intermission it was this guy you
probably think I'm kind of weird some of
these topics are real strange this is me
this is a friendlier version of me I'm a
product designer consensus I work on the
Robo component library about two years
I've been researching this topic trying
to understand what has been happening
since so to 2016 or what are they
happening since then and also before
that was proceeding this whole this
whole event cool so basically yeah
what's going on and nobody knows is what
I've discovered not even the people in
charge this is Casey Newton on Twitter
he interviewed a YouTube co-ed Pokemon
and she said we work really hard to
understand what's happening on it on
youtube so the people that run these
platforms don't even know what's going
on people and well actually this is
everywhere so you should all be familiar
with this Facebook being used to
distribute state propaganda Facebook
again being used with site violence and
genocide and yanma this one's a bit more
positive actually I thought this is fun
so basically teens have big bodies in LA
they credit in store account all the
body and people have to request to
follow it if you get in if you get
approved it basically means it's your
invite they did not design them this is
this is this is an interesting one so a
DMV says we want to belong anyway I'm
sure you're all staying in MDM DS this
whole idea of this sort of cloaking
anyway so that bus alone and locals say
that basically see the service is a
pestilence which is very spot and
aspirational image they're trying to
forget my project effectively saying
that Envy is one of the Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse
you know Katie this is her LinkedIn
profile and I think so
anything out of the ordinary again
anyone know what's up with Katie yes
partial credit she is a product of
machine learning but what you were not
gonna get is that she was also designed
by a spy Russian spy and wanted to
recruit informants in Washington for
LinkedIn and this is also done by the
Chinese allegedly as well this is a fun
one so hooba grannies in running shoes
at delivering ramen food we're right
here in Japan and and then how you
choose radicalized Brazil so these are
two times investigators that went down
to Brazil in order to understand what's
happening down there and they observe
but they believe they've got the
evidence they publish this evidence
observing that YouTube's recommendation
engine led to the rise in popularity of
visible Senado
and led to his election subsequently so
oh yeah this is really something so in
this article there's as opposed to by
the name of Edward Theodore chief and he
says we have something here that we call
the dictatorship of the like reality is
saying is shaped by whatever message
goes most viral so we're probably
thinking what the hell is going on
because no one explicitly designed
Facebook to incite violence or YouTube
to radicalize Brazilians or Airbnb to
reshape affordability in cities all
around the world all the Linkedin to be
used by recruit informants for foreign
intelligence authorities and I think I
figured this out I think it's the root
cause is the Silicon Valley formulas
pretty simple I'm sure you will know it
I basically take one young self-assured
male white man give him a bunch of cash
and they change the world and they
impose themselves on the planet to make
us better right the issue with this is
that is essentially scale
it's Silicon Valley's obsession and it's
tied to the VC model and the actual
the pallid lower returns around how the
these BC business ones make their money
and if she was scaled inherently is that
at least to complexity now complex
systems complex systems are those where
a system is more than the sum of its
parts and effectively the issue here is
that we can actually predict their
behavior so a complex system is one we
count we do we simply cannot map or
model all the different interactions all
different elements of that system and
therefore they producing the emergent
effects that I showed you which is
exactly the problem
emergence is a classical element or
classical property or output of any
complex system that basically says it's
stuff that you cannot possibly have
imagined with sort of manifesting from
these things oh yeah so essentially one
other way to reframe this is the in
Malcolm's famous Withers so in a simple
system your old design is accepted like
five of you this is simple cause and
effect right you have a like button and
then you it's tied to a counter and it
goes up and you feel good about yourself
the complex system what happens is that
cause might still be tied to effect but
then that effect might be tied to other
effects as well see if the second and
third and fourth order effects that lead
to these some of the examples that I
showed you earlier in the talk and so
yeah the fundamental problem we have
here is that we can't fully know all the
unintended effects about design choices
in a complex system a single cause might
have any kind of effect for an example
if this is tied to a counter in a simple
system I mean it's not a very it's
simple it cannot be manipulated to any
great degree that new feed if the like
button is tied to a recommendation
engine that is built by a company that
has designed a business model to
incentivize time on site in order to
sell ad inventory all of those design
elements lead to some of the examples I
showed you before radicalization of
people
distributing propaganda and so on and so
forth so that are used by actors outside
the system in politics and culture etc
in ways that were never intended so it
is it or read this book and no it's
really good okay so yes I'm James Brown
oh he's written a bunch of essays around
sort of this concept of the new Dark Age
and then he published this book that
came out of the start of this year maybe
the blast but he essentially says what
is needed is not new technology but new
metaphors a metal language for
describing the world and complex systems
of reward a new shorthand is required
one that simultaneously acknowledges and
addresses the reality of the world in
which people politics culture and
technology are utterly enmeshed so what
I'm proposing if you will is that we
need some kind of third layer the 90s in
the early 2000s what was around in those
days was basically all there was was UI
need UI design and that was your
thinking
and then obviously dawn Norman invented
UX in this applied in sort of a
computing context in the mid 90s but he
didn't find its way into web design as a
practice until sort of what 2005 six
seven eight so on and basically UX
subsumed UI as a cohesive collective
practice and my thought is that a third
layer is going to subsea wax as well and
it's gonna be for the design of complex
systems were adapting complex systems so
the question is why can we find a new
design language and what have really
established that it's not a process of
creation but revelation we don't need to
invent anything new everything that we
need is wordy has already been explored
has been published of his being talked
about and exists in many different
disciplines right now today one example
of how we can find this process of
Revelation facilitated this is John Boyd
Air Force pilot this is a happier John
Waite
he did what
it was called the aerial attack State so
in the in the mid 20th century it was
around the 60s it was believed that
dogfighting Aero dogfighting was far too
complex to ever be objectively not been
defined and that no objective tactics
manual would ever be creative
he just applied physics to that problem
wasn't that hot and be basically
determined that in any aerial dogfight
the position and velocity of your enemy
compared to yourself is all you need to
know in order to understand what what
the movies they have available and what
you can do the Canon of similarly so
this is the Yoshizawa angle system up
until before they they have system
wasn't developed sorry communicating how
to make origami was a very complicated
process that we just didn't have a
system in place that could cohesively or
clearly communicate on how to make these
phones and so essentially all they did
was create a superior symbolic language
to better communicate how to go through
this process they didn't do anything new
they didn't invent anything new that
just took what was there and they
updated it and incorporated different
symbolic similar diagrams from other
professions what other disciplines are
so how do you design for complexity I've
got no idea and that's kind of the point
um but I do think we need to go deeper
deep it down the stack so to speak and
the first thing to consider is that the
system should be on primitive so a
system is scale free and we're in an age
now where scale has evolved these
systems or basically incentivizes these
systems to grow at a planetary scale a
system is scale free it means that it
can be as small as a single cell or as
large as the universe and systems
everywhere you were all familiar with
them you each have a system for how you
navigate a city or improve your memory
or how you
value-add a a morning routine have you
considered a system and we are very
familiar with these with this as a
concept as a construct and you're
already designing its systems anyway is
it the transition here is can we think
of less amount out putting objects and
outputting relationships knowing that
they gonna shape whatever it is that we
want to approach so effectively saying
that objects as a natural output are a
natural output for any set of
relationships and interactions that they
facilitate moving away from the public
solution as a binary and things because
if someone presents solution can be
another person's problem and
understanding that there are no in a
simple system maybe there is a
meaningful way for a problem solution
solution binary to actually work but in
these complex systems not so much and
also actually the solution implies that
a problem can be solved but any solution
is actually only temporary this is
important as well we design
independently we designed as if we're
designing a single system but we need to
design for interdependence we need to
understand how the systems outside of us
look unconsciously shaping our design
practices and add a bias fees and so on
and so forth I think we're really great
this is Benjamin Bratt and design
theorist I think a really great point of
view on this a lot tickle a ssin of this
was at a talk he gave last year where he
said that he suspected we proposed that
the insurance industry has contributed
more to car design than the automotive
industry itself and this is another
really interesting diagram I found one
so basically how that these in the in
the case of this worker imagine you
imagine deal
okay how do all of these intellect or
systems influence how you design how you
practice how you think and this is where
it gets interesting so moving away from
designing interactions to designing
incentives in order to encourage those
interactions how can we design modes of
value and an opinion believe social
reputational status systems how can we
design those towards achieving our names
I'm happy to move from thinking in non
social terms to social terms something
that the theory of them does very well
is acknowledged able to social
relationships and design for them in
this consensus mechanism and how do we
go from designing the direct control
trying to get clear cause and effect
what is I have to clear cause and effect
to indirect control where it's not
understanding that it's not possible for
us to have every single answer to every
single design social problem but we need
to be able to figure out ways to shape
influence these things even well after
we've actually stepped aside and how do
we acknowledge that we now need to
design from static systems to adaptive
systems
and obviously once again aetherium is
very good for this with this
composability and its capacity to be
formed one of the biggest challenges
that digital static systems have is
sorry is in their inability to adapt so
this gives us a model of how we can get
around that yeah so also essentially we
need to sort of I proposed
I suggested this though we should
consider consider ourselves effectively
on a cycle of creation and adaptation
and both the user and ourselves are both
going through this cycle as well so just
as the user creates and we adapt we
create they adapt and think about less
from a hierarchical perspective and the
set of interrelationships yeah so I
don't know how to actually finish this
out
because this topic is still one that I'm
struggling to I might be able to
communicate cohesively Oh clearly but
this is from LaRoche whilst she says a
flower is not a flower it is made only
of non-flower elements sunshine clouds
time space of minerals godness and so on
a true flower contains the whole
universe and if we were turn any one of
those non-flower elements to its source
there will be no flower so just thinking
about systems are in and through
everything that we're doing
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