Wrapped Attention

A summary of:

Walker, S. (2011) The Spirit of Design: Objects, Environment and Meaning, Earthscan/James & James Scientific Publishers, London.

Chapter 10 – Wrapped Attention: designing products for evolving permanence and enduring meaning

Stuart Walker provides a different 4^th bottom line to consider in the sustainable design debate: “personal meaning”. It is important to note, firstly, that it seems specifically to exclude culturally shared meanings. This seems intentional, to supplement the current triple bottom line: “What is missing from the triple bottom line is explicit recognition that human beings are not only gregarious creatures, but also individuals. Further still, we are individuals who are meaning-seekers” (10.3). In other words, this 4^th element absorbs a bit of the ‘spirituality’ that Inayatullah and others have proposed, in that it “[acknowledges] that sustainability has to be relevant and meaningful to the individual person, as well as socially responsible” (10.3).

But at the same time, Walker’s assessment is a cultural one, and this fourth element addresses (perhaps secondarily) a shared worldview that he sees as being increasingly devoid of genuine meaning, and worse, erodes our commitment to shared social obligations: “The relevance of this fourth element becomes evident in light of research that suggests multitasking and partial attention, as are common in the use of electronic devices, can have detrimental effects on behaviours and values related to social responsibility, environmental stewardship and substantive notions of meaning” (10.2). Walker’s goal as a designer and academic is to show that “more localized, more flexible, more enduring, and less socially and environmentally damaging” designs are possible, which are also “in closer accord with ideas of personal meaning” (10.2).

In this chapter, Walker identifies some worrying behaviors made possible by – and de-elevation of traditional values brought about by – current technological designs. In particular he highlights information overload and dissolving social bonds:

1) “information overload and multitasking can adversely affect our ability to be empathetic, ethically responsive, compassionate, and tolerant and to develop emotional stability—all traits that, traditionally, have been associated with the term ‘wisdom’. Our capacity for empathy, to be inspired, or to be ethically concerned has been linked to the slower acting parts of the brain that require time to reflect on the information received, and it is these parts that appear to be circumvented when we engage in multiple activities simultaneously. Prolonged periods of multitasking via technological products have also been linked to an increase in anxiety and depression and a reduction in attention, intellectual ability, and workplace productivity” (10.5).

2) “Despite offering ‘connection’, they have the effect of separating us from a direct interaction with, and awareness of, our world, which serves to add to our ‘blindness’. This separating effect also applies to our interactions with other people. Caller identification allows us to choose with whom we talk, and e-mail enables us to control when and with whom we communicate; this control increases the distance between ourselves and the other—whether a friend or a stranger” (10.5).

Walker criticizes the irresponsibility of designers, and he questions whether making ‘stuff’ is itself a meaningful activity for designers to pursue. He argues that “if industrial design is to address these considerable challenges [e.g. sustainability], it needs to be reinvigorated through a new sense of purpose” (10.6). This is my criticism exactly of technological developers: the mission seems devoid of purpose if it is just to create cool stuff to distract us from reality.

This means, though, that we have to ask ourselves some difficult questions. We have to challenge ourselves to step outside our familiar ways of thinking and doing; or in Walker’s words, ‘challenge our embedded notions’. In this chapter, Walker shows how this can be done in relation to the mobile phone. We are all too familiar with the mobile phone being a certain thing: a pocket-sized, plastic coated device that we will dispose of in a few years when it becomes outmoded. But we are tacitly accepting a number of shortcomings: “We cannot select a phone that is capable of being incrementally modified in terms of its parts as our needs change, or that we can update aesthetically from locally made, culturally relevant components. And we cannot choose among phones that are conceptually diverse in terms of how their functional benefits are manifested” (10.10). Phones, we accept, are not sustainable. But hey – we want them. In order to become sustainable, the mobile phone as we know it would have to undergo considerable changes. It would have to:

1) evolve continuously

2) be maintained, repaired, and upgraded locally

3) foster more considered, less distracting use patterns

4) internalise impacts

Walker understands the naïveté of proposing we simply must all exchange our mobile phones for these completely reconceptualized phones. But the point he is making is that one of the fundamental flaws is that designers do not provide consumers with Choice. There are some for whom an assemble-it-yourself-as-needed Pouch Phone is appealing because it allows them to foster mindful practice. (This model was

probably inspired by Borgmann’s notion of focal practices – the idea being to make using the phone “a focused activity” (10.14)). But the key to providing Choice is that this choice is Real, which is to say viable. As Walker shows in this chapter, it is possible: “The concepts presented here suggest a different relationship with technological goods by proposing a direction that is not only more compatible with the principles of sustainability but also facilitates a more considered use - one that is in accord with notions of inner meaning” (10.17).

Just for fun, here are some interesting alternative mobile phone designs. These are aimed at increasing privacy, but some, like the Pentaphone, must accidentally produce focused attention when using.