All enhancements to humankind come with an essential boundary of limitations. Likewise, tech advancements that augment human activities have their effects and consequences. Change is assured and inevitable, and it happens fast, and technology catalyzes the process of change, making it more rapid. This multifaceted characteristic of digital transformation has evolved humanity beyond one’s imagination, making it more equipped, easier, and knowledgeable. However, it possesses the potential to become equally or even more dangerous if not restricted at the right time. Not only does it adversely affect humankind, but it also reflects in our surroundings and nature.
Tech advancements has paralyzed and isolated humans from their humanity with the tech advancements and invention of emerging concepts of AI, seaplanes, flying cars, and micromanaging up to an atom, preventing them from thinking and optimizing themselves to their maximum potential. These growths in automation indeed have transformed humans for a better future. But the love-hate relationship with technology is an ongoing, ever-concerning global issue that draws the attention of both experts and individuals to bring an equilibrium to balance.
Technology has impacted design in numerous ways since the invention of modern machinery. Innovation and creative thinking have majorly transformed to keep up with the cultural and technological changes. The tools used to shape and create art and design have constantly been replaced with a much more modern medium defining a new design language in each era. This has affected the output from a very early stage, not only in terms of materials, colors, and textures but also the user experience and requirements.
As the generation changes, so do the design processes. Traditional devices and methods are being replaced by advanced technology designed to make the design process more accessible and smoother, allowing a better creativity flow. With our lives becoming incredibly digital, constant and drastic changes are demanded in the design of objects, interfaces, buildings, and creative practices. Having mentioned timely change, the means of designing have changed since the invention of the most straightforward things like a pencil. Most people misunderstand technology by associating it with only highly innovative machinery, whereas most low-tech creations result in substantial design changes. There is a very fine line defining simplification and mechanism. The complexity of high-tech structures and buildings derives from the prerequisite simplicity of low-tech design.
High-Tech Design | Tech Advancements
High-tech design is influenced by advanced engineering with appropriate complexity for sustainable resilience. Highly technical structures, primarily dealing with finding innovative design solutions, were introduced and developed in British Modernist architecture in the 1960s. It involves lightweight and low-tech materials and systems compounded together, resulting in complex designs beyond pragmatic approaches to achieve emphasized futuristic solutions.
Architects such as Norman Foster and Richard Rogers are the foremost examples of this change introducing a synced and successful amalgamation of practical engineering and creative design thinking technologies into architecture. Centre Pompidou, an epitome of complex design yet a highly flexible and convenient container of art, designed by the architect Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano in 1977, is a classic creation of high-tech innovation.
Technology may be believed to be an interface between individuals and the products created, but whether to use these new systems effectively to enhance one’s creative activities or let them grow out of proportion in one’s life, which eventually diminishes the natural capacities of humans is the tipping point. The approach of advanced technology is centered on designers’ cognitive processes. The development of new CAD (computer-aided design) systems and their evaluation should be conducted based on a profound understanding and application of the technology and the designer’s creative thinking. While the design process is primarily conceptual and software-dominated, the construction industry has appreciated revolutionary improvements bridging the gap between conceptual planning and implementation.
The introduction of Augmented and Virtual Reality is a game changer in the design business. It allows the user to experience a greater depth and creates an immersive experience for a better and more futuristic understanding of the concepts. The improvements in Robotics and 3D technology have emerged as an addictive means of communication due to their limitless possibilities to easily create and transform complex concepts into 3-dimensional tactile objects. Digital and social advancements have made design, furniture, and furnishings more tactile, and the overall design is more camouflaged with technology and planning. Due to the extensive flexibility and communication it offers, technological enhancements have successfully connected the world and integrated global practicality into the design world due to the vast amount of flexibility and communication.
Low Tech
Low Tech is a system designed to be simple to implement, making usability convenient. This technology involves the process of manufacturing and introducing tools to create, reducing the complexity, and utilizing fewer, local, and sustainable materials as much as possible. This concept looks at innovation from a different perspective, using minimal methods and being more respectful to the planet by considering repairing, refurbishing, recycling, and reusing. Thus breaking from the myth of low-tech systems being a step back in the creative process, many organizations and architects have been focusing on setting up worldwide adoption and acceptance of low-tech teaching and spreading awareness of its potential to create a positive change in the highly digital era. One of those is a low-tech magazine that was launched in 2007. Some standard tech information included organic farming, zero waste initiative, ecological houses, sustainable community, neighborhood development, and the “Do it yourself” (DIY) philosophy.
Reference
- Pew Research Center (2018). The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World
https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/04/17/the-future-of-well-being-in-a-tech-saturated-world/
- How Is Technology Affecting Design? By Sonya Lehner. June 25, 2018
https://blog.interface.com/technology-design-trends/
- How Is Technology Affecting Design?
https://www.lovethatdesign.com/article/technology-affecting-design/
- Positive Technology: Designing E-experiences for Positive Change
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01571/full
