On the Limits of Technological Futures

The cutting edge dulls on everyday life. (p.10)

McCullough counsels caution when it comes to visions of the future that rely too heavily on technology. These “technofutures” promise to dramatically change the way we live our lives, but more often than not require a sacrifice of some aspect of our human selves to adhere better to the rules of the technology. They seek to sanitize or replace the world that exists, rather than work within it. They focus on means, without enough thought to ends.

He draws examples from across interaction design and architecture to make his point. Industrial usability boosted efficiency and comfort, as long as we were willing to conform our bodies to an average measure. The idea of cyberspace promised a kind of freedom through disembodiment of our physical selves. And modernism in architecture "espoused the belief that humanity must remake the world according to its own rational abstractions” (p.11). 

The issue in each of these cases, according to the author, is a discounting of the value of context. Whether it’s our bodies, our sense of place, or our history, these "technofutures" start to ask us to leave behind foundational pieces of what make us human. Under most of these classic "future of…” fantasies, a person’s intent and agency are stripped from them, as they become primarily characterized as users of a technology.

Modern examples of this phenomenon are not hard to come by either. Plenty of companies will craft highly polished vision videos to sell a future built around their product. I also feel like anyone who has worked in design will recognize a version of the same issue when they find themselves involved with an ill-conceived “branded experience” designed to insinuate a brand regardless of context and subvert a person’s intention toward a “brand purpose."

McCullough doesn’t want to see pervasive computing follow a similar path. He admits that without course correction, the anytime-anywhere convenience offered by pervasive or ubiquitous computing falls into the same trap as any other technological future.

Recalling postmodern urbanists and architects, he offers the ideas of embodiment and place as an antidote.

Much as by the late 1960s, dissenting writers like Jane Jacobs and Aldo Rossi were explaining how the modernist city was all wrong, now current work in situated, embodied interaction design questions the aims of universalizing, disembodied cyberspace… much as Jane Jacobs found living service ecologies in the apparent chaos of premodern neighborhoods, interaction designers now turn to the patterns of the living world as something other than a clean slate, and something to be understood, not overcome. (pp.11-12)

It’s interesting to consider McCullough’s warning these days (12 years later at the time of writing), when much attention is again being paid to virtual reality. His dismissal of the ideals of cyberspace might seem short-sighted with the advent of consumer VR, but I would argue his point is no less valid. No matter what future is being offered or the chances of its adoption, it’s worth remembering that life takes place in context and is usually most meaningful when human agency is respected