Saturday, April 17, 2010

Your turn #11


What should we do with our trash? In the NYTimes.

But these next-generation incinerators, known as waste-to-energy plants, have not caught on in the United States, where most garbage is still hauled to distant landfills. What stands in the way of the U.S. adopting more of these advanced technologies?
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The NYTimes article brings to mind the idea of technology. For example, technology as the arm driving design.

Is technology a tool or has it taken (sort of independently of any subject's overall direction) a 'life' of its own? 

Don't be naive: Technology has become something to react to, rather than direct -just try directing your latest word processing package outside its parameters, setting up a new television set without its pre-loaded instruction, or servicing your own brand new car. Such technologies have been designed with an embodied 'will' of their own that designs the users' and the technicians' relations to them.

For further reference, see Tony Fry's A New Design Philosophy: An Introduction to Defuturing (University of South Wells Press, 1999).