“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” -Ludwig Wittgenstein (who probably was the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, counter to what Latour had to say)
At some point and for only a couple minutes, our last class discussion started to enter into some deep waters when it comes to a language/logic (“L”)/grammar, and how “L” sets the parameters of possibility for any agent working within it. This got me thinking about computer languages, and the immense impact markup and programming languages have had on digital design. Quick note: what I’ve written below is not only sketchy, but tenuous and tentative, but I’m interested in whether other people are thinking about this and might have another perspective…
Within any logic, every syntactic element has a function, and some are placeholders for variables, which are in turn placeholders for semantic content. But if the semantic variables are left empty, neither the functions nor the content do anything. This micro-schema of syntax and meaning in these languages is meant as background for the simple fact that without culture, the logic is beyond useless. I’m not sure this rant has much to do with graphic design beyond “loosely topical” but when the question was raised (don’t remember the exact context) it triggered a floodgate personal irritations with SF/Silicon Valley’s neo- logical positivism, and frequent denials of cultural meanings as “unscientific” without noticing that the semantic value of a scientific fact and an aesthetic judgement are in many cases reduced to the same value in the world of “L”, and that this is not the case in natural language, and then asking hard questions about meaning and culture. In other words, this might be why that new app is ugly: it was designed by an engineer. (To be fair, while this is somewhat common, plenty of developers are on top of all this, though not so sure about the new Yahoo! logo…)
Is this a design issue? That many internet services are being designed by amateur designers steeped in code?
Finally, the “deep” thing we touched on was a chicken/egg question about syntax versus semantics. That is a serious philosophical question.
Whoa, Rachel! I need a horse to ride this one. Can you parse what you’re thinking a bit — a version for dummies? And to switch metaphors, there are a number of interesting threads, but perhaps so many that it’s hard to follow one.
I just wanted to send a few references your way. Two thoughtful and curious individuals who happen to be designers. They might be useful thinkers for in regards to some of your threads
One is Steve Wilcox, who is a product designer. He too, would likely agree that Wittgenstein was the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. He would definitely credit W with providing him the intellectual tools to make successful design — in Steve’s case, life-and-death medical instruments and devices. Steve’s site is here: dscience.com and an article of potential interest, “The Problem with Transparency is that it’s not Conspicuous Enough,” can be found here: http://dscience.com/wp-content/uploads/Wilcox_Transparency.pdf (sorry for the lack of HTML!)
Hugh Dubberly is another potentially like-minded soul. Check out his many articles on this page: http://www.dubberly.com/articles
Hi Louise, thanks for these references. Yes, perhaps I should have waited until the morning to post this, as some things ought to be slept on. :\
But let me at least try to clarify. You sent links for designers applying concepts from both linguistics and the philosophy of language to their practices, and seemingly exploring profound questions about language while solving powerful design problems. This idea of “design science” is very interesting, as is Wilcox’s discussion of “technological determinism” — looking forward to learning more. This is definitely a Positive direction that could be extracted from my “ahhh Silicon Valley and logic with inchoate ranting” post.
The Negative direction is that the logic of computer languages that are typically used for designing internet services are very simple compared with the cultural logics and natural languages people use. Which should be a case for skilled designers who are not only experts in formalisms, but also skilled in adapting complex cultural features of a product’s ideal user-base to simpler forms, to render the products transparent for users. Which certainly doesn’t always mean Apple’s user-friendly approach, but that is one powerful example.
Yahoo! is a case where this did not happen (new logo is only the tip of the iceburg). Engineers are not designers, and the logic of software engineering could very well be what’s confusedly expressed there, and in many products that don’t take that next step and hire an expert. As someone mentioned in class, many of the services pouring out the venture capital-backed startup world don’t have great designs (not for lack of funding), from concept to visual-interactive inception.
This is what I was thinking about and failed to provide context for before going into what I take to be a common “technological determinism” treatment of culture by engineers who are also designing the public-facing aspects of their products I wanted to link the problems of the philosophical movement logical positivism to some of the design fails we observe on the internet service market today. Developers who are often at least without design backgrounds and often without broad cultural awareness and comprehension seem to consider computer logic as hegemonic, and devalue cultural logics as well as design as a distinct discipline. I believe I’ve observed quite a few app producers so attached to the programming and markup languages they use for building that they forget the natural language world is not so easily reduced to syntactic variables and functions.
I hope this unpacked the rant at least somewhat, and thanks again for the links. Looks like I might be able to borrow from these designer’s more developed conceptions of two separate issues: 1) philosophy of language as a design science tool, and 2) technological determinism in internet service design
Thank you!
Thanks for revisiting, unpacking, and clarifying your thoughts, Rachel! “The Negative direction is that the logic of computer languages that are typically used for designing internet services are very simple compared with the cultural logics and natural languages people use. ” Indeed!
You absolutely should read (if you haven’t already) Digital_Humanities by Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld , Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp. I believe you’ll find some interesting thinking and possible directions concerning the issues you’re concerned with (although I’m not sure about the way you’ve summarized them in ways that I can understand).
Also, you might want to follow @derrickschultz and his cohort as I believe their discussion may be of interest. Derrick worked with me for a few years. He super intelligent and can program with equal sophistication as he can design. When in came time for him to go to grad school, we realized there wasn’t a program that was suitable for him to be able to develop there different intelligences — which may indicate the root of issues that you indicate. (Although, Johanna Drucker did offer to take him into her Program.)
Lastly, I’m wondering who you’re interested in addressing? Who would you be trying to convince of the significance of your point of view?
Hope these thoughts are of some help for you!
After reading, just wanted to quickly point to Jan Van Toorn’s position on this issue: Due to this collapse of form/function from separate commercial/aesthetic/linguistic areas, to a definition in relation of their social significance, he strongly advocates for elements of the aesthetic level (syntax) to be extended to the level of meaning (semantics), as this is where “the spectacle falsifies the reality of life.”
Perhaps I’m misreading you, but this is really important now—engineers doing product and graphic design definitely frequently leads to poor results, in either immensely complicating things for the user or in a lack of visual clarity, but it seems this is the flip-side of the coin which Apple so handsomely demonstrates. Although the pursuit of radically user-centred design is a noble one, and a product frequently becomes more usable with this strategy employed, it’s also hiding increasingly complex architectures from view. Challenging this approach of extensive oversimplification is of utmost importance, as it comes down to an ethical question of design itself—are easy-to-use crystal prisons/walled gardens/malls/amusement parks the pinnacle of user-centred design?