Hasta La Ideas

A few months ago, our columnist Fosta sent me the text of his bi-monthly column, in which he proposed a design philosophy that he dubbed “The Future Mundane,” which was among the more though-provoking pieces in recent memory. When it came time to reflect on the Year in Review, I had originally intended to frame my piece on 2013 in technology in terms of practical yet powerful hypothesis, only to end up with an obliquely apologetic rejoinder to Christopher Mims’ 2013-Was-a-Lost-Year-for-Tech polemic. In a sense, it’s two ways of saying the same thing: Even though reality often doesn’t live up to our expectations, there’s no reason not to expect it to be better than it is.¹

Indeed, the Future Mundane is as much a symptom of our impatience or outright frustration with the current generation of technology as it is a measured optimism about the next one. We might reduce the sentiment to the ‘megapixel effect’: we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that more is always better when it comes to digital cameras, despite the the fact that the spec feels vestigial in the smartphone era. We may think of ourselves as discerning consumers, skeptical of marketing hype, but at some level, we are conditioned to judge new things on a superficial basis, whether it’s a GIF of an interface breakthrough or the lackluster specs of the latest new smartphone.²

Lost year, maybe. But the Future Mundane is also a manifestation of a parallel theory of material culture, Naoto Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison’s notion of ‘Supernormal,’ which speaks to the process of becoming mundane.

When we create something that is new with the expectation for it to be different yet it somehow feels normal, that is what defines what Supernormal is about. Supernormal is something that is designed with an essence of normality that we share in our memory. In other words, Supernomal is something new but it has familiarity from the beginning. Becoming normal is something that happens and it is not something we can make happen.

I invoked the ever-relevant hypothesis in an [e-mail] interview with the former and IDEO’s Jane Fulton Suri, whose ‘Thoughtless Acts’ nicely complement so-called ‘curious rituals‘—device-engendered behaviors, postures, tics, etc.—as subconscious adaptations to the objects and world around us. This is the metadata of reality, which are not subject to prognostication and can only be contemplated in hindsight.³

All of which speaks to the transcendent breadth of cultural context in stories about the future. Parallax motion is a useful metaphor: Near or far, the future will be populated by an accretive totality of timeless heirlooms and novelty items alike; damaged goods, obsolescence (planned or otherwise), and buggy betas; slow-moving institutions alongside visionary products and services; as well as a persistent horizon of expectations. Taking an anthropological longview, science fiction cannot possibly take all of these things—which collectively constitute a world—into account. But these seams in the fabric of a future reality aren’t plotholes so much as ‘storyholes’ (see Fosta’s distinction), and a cohesive narrative and compelling plot will supersede any gaps or oversights.

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Stills from Maker, a forthcoming documentary about the Maker Movement

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts · Furniture, Pt. 1 · Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire · Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future · Food & Drink

Creation culture has seen some interesting incremental advances this year. DIY remains a powerful buzzword, while “handmade” is no longer a meaningful descriptor. We’ve Kickstarted many projects and undershot even more. The trend of community (i.e. crowd) support of product development and the growth of collective tech shops is heartening, while the Etsyesque implication that anyone with a hot glue gun can make an earning without skill or hard work remains aggravating. Small scale production is on the rise, and large scale domestic manufacturing is showing flickers of a comeback.

Between the highlights and danklights of this year, you can find hints of where the makin’ train is headed next year. Here are some of my favorites with a smattering of points on the good, the bad and what’s in store.

DIY Movement

Along with exciting developments in ever-ensmallening technology and cheaper options for prototyping and connectivity, the social elements of the DIY world got some boosted signal. This year DIY culture has gotten a little more self-aware—a little more precious and corporate too, but hey, wheat with the chaff.

On the good side, the series The Makers of Things and the movie We Are Makers. While it’s easy to fall into self-congratulation and romantic notions about craft and heritage, these largely steer clear of clichés and offer a human perspective. Both documentaries highlight the innate human urge to create, and the current role of “making” as a sort of social currency. Since Doing-It-Yourself is not currently an economic or survival necessity, the choice to make things takes on an unusual air—you’re “THAT person” in a group of normal folks, providing an automatic connection point for community building with likeminded “THAT persons.” The movie also features higher-ups at companies like Make Magazine and Etsy who cop to the financial gain in capitalizing on the DIY industry. So there’s that.

On the badder side… Etsy itself. While continuing to extol its own lucrative role as an individual-empowering vending platform, Etsy also continues to relax the standards for their “handmade marketplace” to the point of meaninglessness by allowing mass produced items to vend side by side with the work of individual craftspeople. While “handmade” is a necessarily complicated designation—where does the act of “making” begin?—this move is understandably considered unfair to the small enterprises that the site supposedly promotes. The owl-loving neckbeards at the top claim that incorporating mass produced products on the site is reinventing the relationship between buyer and producer. Well that sure makes sense, considering the consumer has so few other sources for factory-produced items. Thriving handmade marketplace indeed.

The future? People will keep making things. I promise.

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