What is the future of the relationship between communication design and technology?
Communication design has been inextricably linked with media technologies as they have evolved throughout history and as they continue to do so. What is the future of this relationship and what impact has technology had on the way we think and process information?
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was a well respected philosopher of communications theory. His work had a significant impact on the study of media theory and he is best known for his metaphors such as ‘The medium is the massage’ and ‘Global Village’. One of McLuhan’s many observations suggest that old media becomes the content of new media, and each new medium retains elements of its predecessors (Levinson 1999). Speech enabled human beings to communicate via a shared common language. It allowed the sharing of thoughts, ideas, knowledge and skills with other individuals within small communities. The phonetic alphabet (a visual representation of spoken sounds) was the next medium to develop based on the first shared language which gave us the ability to record speech and communicate via the written word. The printing press enabling the mass production of content which could reach a much greater audience and be read by future generations. Telephone and radio enabled an individual to reach a mass audience or communicate with another individual in real time across the globe, changing communication forever. Photography captured true representations of observable moments in time. This technology was then adapted to capture and play back image sequences giving us Film. As time passed capturing video became cheaper and more accessible and could be used by journalists to report on events across the globe. This brings us to the great medium of the current generation, the Internet. Together with technology the Internet has evolved over the years and has absorbed all the above and become much more. We use it to communicate with one another like never before. It has become our primary source of information; it tells us where to go and how to get there, keeps us up to date with global events, entertains us, answers our questions and enables us all to become publishers. McLuhan’s famous expression, “The medium is the message” proposes that the use of a medium is more profound in impact upon society than the medium itself. The successful introduction of each new medium has always brought about significant sociological change, and each new medium is usually met with hostility and fear from older generations. As new technology evolves from the building blocks of its predecessors, so too does communication design.
The first typeface was modelled on the writing of scribes who until the era of the printing press, hand produced all publications. The established medium of print migrated into film, television, and then digital media. Design principles and visual grammar make up part of a language that we have all learned though our exposure to media within our culture, just as we learned to speak through exposure to a vocal language. It is the role of the graphic designer to study these principles, understand them and how they have developed through historical media and can be used in the creation of effective design solutions. Advancements in technology and the introduction of new mediums have always had a significant effect on the role of the communication designer. Today there are more specialist areas within communication design than ever before. It’s rare to find designers who specialise in more than a couple of these areas.
Arguably Augmented Reality (AR) could be the next great medium that will have a significant impact on society, culture and communication design. This new technology connects the digital world to the physical, enabling smartphones to recognise images and objects just like the human brain and then access information assigned to those elements from an infinite library of knowledge, experience and ideas. This technology is still in its infancy and currently primarily used for novelty purposes. For example pointing the camera in a smartphone at a tagged object could trigger a cinema quality 3D animated model, placing it in the physical world as observed though the screen on the device. This 3D model can be tracked to real world objects, previously identified as a kind of digital fingerprint which then triggers the animation. AR designers and developers refer to the overlaid graphics as an Aura. A good demonstration of this technology can be viewed at Ted.com by a technologist (Mills 2012).
Google, a company that strives towards the creation of artificial intelligence is beginning to enable this medium to realise its true potential. ‘Google Glass’ is essentially a camera, display, touchpad, battery and microphone built into a pair of spectacles which project a display into one’s field of vision. This then enables the user to record video, take pictures, search, navigate and translate the physical world around them. What makes a device like Google Glass different from other mobile communication devices such as desktop computers and mobile touch screen devices is the constant connection between the physical world and the digital world. History suggest that design for augmented reality and devices like Google Glass will be built upon design principles of old media which in turn suggests physical gesture as a likely interaction method. Google Glass primarily uses voice recognition for user interaction which is an obvious choice for this type of device which has no physical touch screen display. Intelligent voice recognition software like Apple’s ‘Siri’ understands natural speech and asks the user questions when more information is required, however it is rare to observe people using this technology in public, so it is foreseeable that users will have a preference for physical touch or gestures over voice recognition due to the privacy and subtlety it affords. Technology like ‘The Leapmotion Controller’ released in July 2013 which enables users to interact with desktops via physical 3D hand gestures is already being built into laptops as a new user interaction option. This makes it likely that this method of interaction will be adopted by devices like Google Glass in the future. For example an open hand held in one’s field of vision could activate a navigation system. Double tapping an object with a finger could run a search that retrieves data relevant to that item such as description, manufacturer, commercial value etc. tracking this content to the object. A gesture on a flat surface could activate a keyboard display that the user can interact with, and any surface could become a window to the internet.
Some interesting work in sensory perception was recently carried out by students and the Royal College of Art in London exploring the concept of augmented reality and how devices like Google Glass could be improved.
It is highly likely advertisers and marketeers will extensively exploit this new medium (as with all other mediums) when advancements in technology make it available to a mass audience. However, a more practical use for the medium would be instruction, demonstration and the enhancement of publications that would be able to utilise new media via that printed publication. All of the above would generate a significant demand for design solutions. The effect of this new medium on social media is likely to be significant. Younger generations today which frequently contribute to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, would be able to literally see and hear the world through the eyes and ears of others and share their own experiences. This has already begun to raise questions of privacy and security. “The human being on the air, on the phone (and now online) has a very weak awareness of private identity.” (McLuhan 1978). Police in Britain have recently started using social media to help target crime before it happens. If this is allowed to continue, a world of walking CCTV cameras will likely be exploited.
Google Glass has already been banned in a Seattle bar and many establishments in Las Vegas do not allow the device to be worn in public. In West Virginia legislators have tried to make the device illegal to use while driving. Google released a statement stating that they would not approve apps for the device that would use face recognition, about the same time a federal judge ordered Google to release customer data to the FBI without the need for a warrant.
Today we live in a physical world but a window to the virtual world is always within reach. If devices like Google Glass one day become as popular as the smartphone is today, these two worlds will begin to merge together. Another thing to consider is what effect this technology could have on the way we think? There has been much debate around the effects of the internet on intelligence, the article ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid’ (Carr 2008) is a good example which explores how technology has shaped what we commonly perceive as reality. “When the mechanical clock arrived people began thinking of their brains as operating like clockwork. Today, in the age of software we have come to think of them as operating like computers” (Carr 2008). Google’s co founder Sergey Brin hints towards Google’s intentions during an interview “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.”.
We are becoming out of date; our brains cannot retain enough knowledge and we are unable to process tasks with enough speed and efficiency. Current developments indicate we are reaching a point where technology is beginning to surpass human abilities. We demand continued high speed access to the Internet 24/7 in order to function within the modern world. Today’s bionic technology could soon create artificial limbs more capable than those of the healthy human body. The Channel 4 documentary ‘How to Build a Bionic Man’, (Mayer 2012) demonstrated the latest cutting edge bionic limbs and artificial organs. This technology raises moral and ethical questions. For example, should people who do not need this technology be allowed to acquire it to enhance the capabilities of the body? The same questions could soon be asked of the human brain.
The latest breakthroughs in neuroscience have enabled humans to control devices by reading the neural activity of the brain and translating those signals into digital commands. In 2012 a fifty eight year old woman who was paralysed from the neck down operated a robotic arm via her brain signals. Other patients have also used the system to control a cursor on a computer screen. If Augmented Reality and devices like Google Glass become part of our culture, neuroscience could take our connection to the “World Brain” (Wells 1936) to the next level, eliminating the need for a device to be worn over the eye and project information directly into conscious thought.
With the infinite database of knowledge becoming more accessible through rapidly advancing technology, the idea of the human brain retaining knowledge almost becomes a pointless exercise. “Whenever information needed to do a task is readily available in the world, the need for us to learn it diminishes” (Norman D 1998). It takes great effort to absorb and retrieve knowledge. As developments in technology bridge the gap between man and machine, the internet could one day become our primary source of knowledge. Some today would say that it already is.
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