Design, ideas and other flotsam
Transmission #6
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This is Transmissions by me, Martin Brown. Father. Husband. Designer at Craig Walker and lecturer at RMIT. Marty to most.
This is a regular newsletter that collates some of the more interesting stories, links, quotes and other curios that float my way.
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This week, as part of Melbourne Design Week, on behalf of Craig Walker and our partner WorkSafe, I am hosting an online panel looking at the future of work: A New Work State of Mind: Guilt, Motivation and Equity in the Flip from Workplace to Headspace.
It’s this Thursday 1st April, at 1:00pm AEST. Get your tickets here.
Design
What has covid-19 taught us about remote work?
Matt Clancy, Medium
The questions raised by this topic have a looooong way to run yet, but this article summarises some of the emerging scientific literature on the subject. TLDR remote work seems to enable greater productivity, and most people quite like it, but the question of the long-term ramifications of the lack of serendipity remains unanswered, as do the effects on who really gets those promotions – the better workers, or those sitting closer to the boss.
The implications for how the WFH-revolution plays out over time could be enormous, particularly for the shape of our cities. Will remote workers abandon the dense cities for a tree-change/sea-change? Or would we be foolish to bet against the multi-century trend of agglomeration towards cities?
At the other end of the pipe are the implications for the design of offices. What do we do with the thousands of sq/f of commercial office space? It seems certain that their utilisation will change, but what does this mean for the physical manifestation of the office?
The emerging view seems to be one of a hybrid future, with a combination of in-office and at-home working, thereby giving employees variety, and the opportunity to choose the best of both scenarios.
But before we get too carried away let’s also not forget that those who are able to take advantage of remote work, ‘knowledge workers’ essentially, are at most 1/3 of the labour force. So while remote work might be seen by some as a democratising force, flattening complex office hierarchies into generic Slack @handles, as with many of the effects of COVID, it may end up only exacerbating existing social inequities, as this quote from Tiffany Philippou so eloquently puts it:
”Perhaps it won’t be long until your colleague with the bigger home and their own private office with working wifi is promoted above you as you are sat on your loo, balancing your laptop on your lap, trying to dial back in for the team meeting."
Ideas
Primacism: David Rudnick on the struggle for Primacy
Interdependence Podcast
At times interminable, at other times revelationary, this long conversation on Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s rather excellent podcast is practically a monologue by the iconoclastic graphic designer David Rudnick, in which he posits his notion of physical and digital prime:
Physical prime: an ideology in which value + meaning only exist to the extent they can be traced to a physical source
Digital prime: an ideology in which value + meaning only exist to the extent they can be traced to a digital source
His argument is that we are in the process of birthing, for the first time, a generation for whom digital prime will be their default mode – and that the value that they derive from life will exist primarily in the digital environment (think social media, digital art, crypto, AR and the like). It’s a compelling way to describe some of the strange phenomena of our times.
Find a rough transcription here.
Quotes
“The avionics you see in cockpits are bafflingly primitive because it's so hard, slow, and expensive to get the FAA to approve new technology. As a result, pretty much every pilot flies with an iPad running sophisticated flight planning software -- their connection to a world that the FAA doesn't encumber. Now, every system suffers from some of this inertial dynamic, no matter what the culture around it is.”
– Patrick Collison
Something some of my readers from the corporate world might find achingly familiar.
Other
An inspiring plan to green the Sinai desert. Possibly proving that ‘geo-engineering’ doesn’t need to be delivered Dr Evil-style.
Turns out the Google/Facebook/Australian government showdown was just old-fashion government extortion on behalf of Newscorp and its media allies. Whowuddathunkit?
Gucci selling AR virtual sneakers for $17.99. Either massively over or under valued.
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