'Now time' and green design

John Wood

Programme Co-ordinator

MA in Design Futures

Goldsmiths University of London

It is comforting that designers are taking a positive step in creating a sustainable world and it is gratifying that some projects, such as UNEP at the University of Amsterdam:

http://unep.frw.uva.nl/text/research.html

make their ideas and strategies publicly available. Other exemplary sources include the Berkeley Green Manufacturing Site:

http://greenmfg.ME.Berkeley.EDU/green/papers/papers.html

If you need information not included in such Web Sites, you can track it down from one of the 'Virtual Libraries', using keywords such as 'energy':

http://solstice.crest.org/online/virtual-library/VLib-energy.html

or 'biodiversity':

http://golgi.harvard.edu/biopages/biodiversity.html

However, despite these advances, some would say that designers must look beyond familiar practices such as recycling, re-usability, and low energy systems because the problem of 'green design' is bigger and more difficult than it looks. They argue that 'Green Design' is a can of political, economic, and philosophical worms that make us question who we are, as well as questioning what we should do next. Some sites offer an introduction to these cultural and ideological questions, such as "A Quick Guide to Eco-Ideologies":

http://ccme-mac4.bsd.uchicago.edu/ESR/EcoIdeas.html

This site offers the provocative view that 'Eco Capitalism' is a contradiction in terms. It also refutes the common assumption that science will fix all ecological problems. Similar debates around anarchism trace out a profound relationship between technology and certain cultural tendencies, for example, issues of power and gender:

http://www.usyd.edu.au/~cjmount/cat/anarchism/vof/ariel2.html

Here, feminist and anarchist perspectives become enmeshed in a quest for new ways of living. Heady stuff for the busy designer, yet, even if we try to ignore social and political questions we find that the most basic issues are often surprisingly controversial. For example, the impending 'crunch point' between upwardly spiralling population levels and downwardly spiralling resources is seldom seriously discussed, even by leading politicians and designers. The silence continues, despite the research that tells us that developed nations must soon bring their net consumption right down, perhaps to a mere twentieth (see Factor 20 ) of current levels:

http://www.wmin.ac.uk/media/02/event/desc/factor_20.html

a dangerously accelerating world

Designers are in a fix. We know they are very good at helping to heat up the economy, but they have never before been asked to put economic growth into reverse. The problem is usually analysed in terms of space and materials, but it is clear that 'time' is also a key factor in the equation. Consuming less means slowing down the pace of the economy, yet everything still gets faster and faster. Why is this happening? In today's digital-stop-watch-world, time is money, and this phenomenon is also an underrated feature of our technological systems. We produce, and consume, at the pace of our time-regulated computers, telephones, and entertainment systems. Marx was the first to note the importance of 'mechanical time' in the evolution of industrial technology, writing in 1863 that

"the whole theory of production and regular motion was developed through it."

In human terms, our experience of time has become a vital and symptomatic feature of attitudes and behaviour in a dangerously accelerating world.

living in the present

Umberto Eco is famous for founding the "Slowfood Society" in which food gathering, preparing, and eating take place in an unhurried and convivial way. However, it is difficult to see how such a laissez-faire attitude could become the basis of a radical 'green design' without it being seen to sacrifice the 'holy cows' of endless economic growth and technological utopia. The idea of a 'future' is central to both objectives, and we should not forget that the conventional idea of design is also meaningless without it! The film maker Louis Malle wistfully described low-paid brick makers in 1970's rural India as "living for the moment without past or future". For similar reasons, craft-based environmentalists are sometimes accused of "living in the past", by which we could say that, although they may be active and alert in the modern world, they construe their 'present' from an image of a historical past, rather than from a sustainable technological-future.

What do we mean when we say someone is "living in the present"? Two or three hundred years ago the present meant being 'at hand', 'quick in emergencies', or 'favourably attentive'. Yet full subscribers to today's consumer society celebrate the 'present' in a much more hedonistic and self-absorbed way. Our lives are measured out, not only in coffee spoons, but also in ever-changing street fashions that celebrate "now-time" as a nostalgic kaleidoscope of other recent times. Today's experience of 'being' means "being seen"..."looking good"..."feeling good". The credit card culture ensures that we not only live in the present, but also for the present; i.e. 'nothing to pay until the end of the century, then 0% interest!' '

a 'future present'

In the eighties, design became a conspicuous feature of an economic system that robs the future to feed the present. Competitive forces conspire to make products ever more desirable, and the public's attention span has diminished with each new consumerist advance in the war against boredom and alienation. As a result we continue to need, and to expect, more and more. The rhetoric of a future-led 'now-time' is epitomised by the promise of an immediate and replaceable 'new'. It portrays 'now-time' as hovering somewhere between present and future. Even in the caring, ethical '90's, most products are still designed to seem jaded after a short time, and this serves to overvalue 'brand new' qualities rather than those which will endure. Ironically, much of consumerism's focus on 'the present' is really more an idea of the present. Already, some consumers are complaining that their old microwave cookers are too slow! Our 'fast-food', 'get-away', 'forget-it-all-for-an-instant' society promotes an anticipation of a 'future present' in which pleasure is endlessly deferred to a later moment of consumption, leaving us feeling unsatisfied.

runaway global consumption

It has been argued that in a greener, service-centred economy, virtual, rather than material products will deliver affordable satisfaction at an 'acceptable' level of environmental depletion. However, the basis of this optimism is uncertain. I have long argued that virtual, interactive systems of representation will soon evolve beyond harmless 'play-centres' into powerfully addictive, personalised persuaders on behalf of the global multi-nationals. If non-interactive, generalised advertising already enjoys so much influence, what will happen when we have 'smart' systems designed to target individuals in an enticingly interactive way, with multiple product promotions and cross-product sponsorships? Such developments could have a runaway effect on patterns of global consumption, despite all the excellent efforts to recycle, re-use, and to design better, more sustainable products.