“True simplicity is derived from so much more than the absence of clutter and ornamentation—it’s about bringing order to complexity.”
—Apple’s design “guru” Jonathan Ive
True simplicity, when it comes to a technological device, is an illusion. The designer seeks to adapt technology to the user, to make it seem natural, or simply an extension of the body. The device says to us: “This is a thing or a system that was meant to be. It is a fact of nature just like this rock or that tree.” The wireless signals flowing around me at any given moment are much like the nitrogen atoms or CO2 molecules in the air. I know that they’re there, that they make my existence possible, even though I cannot sense them. The “sleek” slab in my pocket magically appeared at a store one day (couldn’t one here just as easily insert “apple” or “chicken nugget”?) until I adopted it and brought it home, like a new puppy. Now it receives these mysterious signals for me to interpret. However, what all seems very natural and simple to us has a deep underside of stultifying complexity. One cannot truly “bring order to complexity”; we only pretend or deny that it’s not there. Utopia is the classic case of attempting to bring order to complexity.
If the slab could speak (or should I say, when Siri becomes intelligent) it could tell me the story of how it came to be. It could tell of every human and robot that had a part in its assembly, and perhaps their stories in turn. It could tell me where its power supply came from. It could tell me of its long journey by ship and container across the sea. I could learn what rare earth minerals it contains. It could tell me its carbon footprint. It could educate me about all of the technological advances in the history of civilization that made its very existence possible.
It occurs to me that my digital words are formed this way: my keystrokes are sent as packets of information to “the cloud”; if Google sees an unknown word, it appears underlined in red, and then I fix it. But it is only through this thought exercise that leads me to imagine the fragmentation and abstraction of the process. Do all of my words go to one server farm or are they scattered around the world? How massive are these servers anyway? Where does the energy come from to run and cool them? How many jobs (for humans) were gained or lost by adopting this technology?
The device, as opposed to the mere tool, hides and abstracts its true story. The device paradigm, with its seemingly revolutionary abstraction, is the hallmark of Modernity. To be Modern means for something to cloak what it truly is, or more specifically, to hide its origins and its place within the larger context of a social or natural system. A myth has been created that something new and improved has been fashioned by humanity, virtually ex nihilo, in order to replace something outdated or broken. This is a myth that says Nature can be enhanced and is blind to the fact that the device is itself a natural product.
As in economics, the veneer of simplicity is achieved by externalizing the costs, and the complexity, elsewhere. Out of sight, out of mind. These are costs that will not go away, however. I see them come back, transformed, in the newspaper, or through images on the nightly news, and I try to explain to my children why these things are happening. Our economic system itself is in thrall to the device paradigm. We accept it without really knowing its mysterious workings. The Fed is the new Olympus, and we nervously await its decree. The costs of producing more money are not showing up as traditional inflation, so it must be okay. But, again, those externalities have a way of sneaking up on you.
Surely one of these cloud-powered algorithms used to recommend new books or music, or maybe the ones used in high frequency trades, could process all of the information required to understand these hidden connections and externalities? Perhaps there’s an app I could download that could tell me what food I should purchase, and where, and when? Will the day come when my car won’t let me choose which way to go? I’m already afraid to update the software on my iPhone out of fear of the new changes that will be inflicted upon me. What happens when you have to update the software on your car?
One could argue that it’s ever been thus, that civilization itself is by its very nature the device paradigm, and that Modernity is simply a matter of degree or scale. The age of fossil fuels (and before it the age of slavery) made “humanism” possible, and the human has mushroomed into Homo Colossus and the Anthropocene. The birth of democracy, after all, was a by-product or consolation prize of Athenian naval supremacy and institutional slavery; the same for art and philosophy. How else could Socrates have had the luxury to ask all those questions? We all know the Roman dark side. The Roman Empire was a growth machine that only foundered once it spread too thin and could no longer consume.
Throughout history we have progress and we have its supporting underside not far away. Today is no different. Like a giant sinkhole, it might one day appear, seemingly out of nowhere. You can make a cool design that seems radically new, be it device or system, but the clutter and the mess don’t go away; it’s just hidden. It really is like magic: a game of misdirection.
At the apex of global civilization, ironically, we find ourselves in a position much like that of the pre-Classical ancients. Before a rational, scientific understanding of the world, mythology provided the backstory and the undercurrents as to why things happened the way they did. This time our mythological gaze is directed at technology rather than Nature (though the difference is illusory), and once again we live at the mercy of the gods.
Benjamin Edwards
October, 2013