How much our convenience cost?

If you think about the Internet as a whole, it made everything much more convenient. All of your files are stored in one place, all of your music as well. Most of the information you need is here too, just waiting for you to click to discover it. No more piles of files or room storage for all that documentation you had to keep and no more Encyclopedias occupying a lot of space in your office.

The development of the cloud made everything even more convenient, more than we could have ever imagined, especially with the amount of technological devices we have nowadays. Storing your files on the cloud made it easy to access anything you needed, anywhere, not only in your home computer. But, how willingly are we, to leave our data up in the cloud, in the hands of a corporation, in the name of convenience?

Well, I would say a lot, putting in other words, all our privacy. With the creation of the Patriot Act, to look out for possible terrorist attacks, our information is freely seen by authorities, with no regards or care for privacy. It’s a power abuse. There are no boundaries, which would stop the government to invade personal lives. And there is no note or question whether you permit that or not, they just do it. The interesting thing is that when talking about the subject with colleagues, friends and family, everyone is, of course, angry and feeling violated. However they know that there is not much that they can do about it, I mean you would be in a fight with the most powerful government in the world. What can they do? Until today, the most I have seen, so far, is people covering their lap top camera with a piece of paper.

What design means nowadays?

It seems that, nowadays, the word “design” is used so loosely that its meaning gets lost. It appears that everyone is a designer these days. You have engineers of all sorts that can be considered designers, architects, interior designers (as the name already shows it) are designers. Then you have graphic designers, UX designers, clothing designers and the names go on. And so, it gets to a point that when someone says “I am a designer”, it doesn’t mean anything, or even better, it means everything, therefore the person has to be more specific about what kind of designer he/she is. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, design is “the way something has been made, the way parts of something are formed and arranged for a particular use, effect, the process of planning how something will look, happen, be made”. Taking into account this definition, indeed a lot of people can be designers and create designs, because they are creating, making something. Architects are creating buildings, clothing designers, clothes, obviously, interior designers are creating nice spaces, engineers are creating products, technologies, websites and so on.

I agree with the author of “Pleasure Design” in saying that design more than make us happy, it entertains and surprises us. But, who is to say what is considered a good design? Some say that taste is personal and it cannot be discussed, in other words, it cannot be judged. Therefore, who is the judge of a good design? Maybe the design of a person is beautiful to someone and, at the same time, horrible to someone else, as it happens in many cases. It is not like a math problem with one correct solution. It has many solutions, being a very subjective matter.

How important is symmetry when we talk about design?

On the reading “ A Fine Balance”, the author talks about how boring is symmetry, praising, on the other hand, the asymmetrical. However, in some way, there cannot be asymmetry without symmetry. To understand asymmetry one has to first understand what is symmetry. And, on the contrary to what the author states, making something symmetrical is not always an easy task. On the same note, making something asymmetrical is also hard. Nevertheless, there shouldn’t be a competition about which one of these is harder. Both designs have their own difficulties. It is challenging to create something symmetrical without being boring and square. At the same time, it takes some skill to make something asymmetrical, but not messy and overwhelming. Maybe the author was right when saying, “Pure symmetry will hardly ever do”, because perhaps, a good design has to have a balance between symmetrical and asymmetrical, and so, pure asymmetry will also hardly ever do.

Regarding a fragment of the talk “Inside the Lines”, it is interesting to notice what one of the people say about websites starting to look alike, nowadays. The person states that maybe it is a good thing that this is happening, just like books that are laid out all the same, because people get more concerned about the content itself. It can’t be known if this is an absolute truth, but perhaps designers are trying to find a way to make the design look seamless, that is, flowing well with the content, which makes sense, because a good design is indeed a seamless one.

As Derrida points out in the reading “From One to Zero”, is it correct to say that books are tools for us to forget?

In thinking more about the subject, I might say that Derrida’s opinion is understandable, due to the fact that, at that time, with the help of books to remember us of several stories that were before, stored in our minds, we allow ourselves to forget, because the book will remind us after all. All it takes is reading it. On the other hand, this could be true back then, however, with the amount of information that is out there nowadays, it may be impossible for us to remember everything without the help of a tool. And so, in this case, the book is a tool used to remember. If you think about it, now, not even books are being enough anymore to store the amount of information that we have. It got to a point that they took too much space, and the invention of the computer and later of e-books, that is, information compressed in one single device was a wonderful idea, some might say.

Moreover, as the reading “From Zero to One” said, these online libraries also made information to be spread much more easily and accessible to more people, once there wasn’t a limited amount of copies and it could be “accessed through an infinite number of web browsers”. Although, it is interesting to notice, in the end of the reading, that more and more each new version of the Kindle wants to look more book-like, that is, people still want the same feeling as when they are reading an actual book. However, they don’t want the constrains that come with a book.

• How far does the free sharing of your work and ideas on the Internet benefit you, regarding authorship and originality?

My question relates to the growing cases of plagiarism due to the help of technology. I agree with Goldsmith when he says that your work receives more attention, visibility, can be spread out much easier and you can network much more through the Internet, which, like he says, can makes wonder to a career like his. The constant flow of information that people have access to is something wonderful as well, specially with websites like Goldsmith’s, UbuWeb. However, I am not sure until what point the free sharing of your work can be beneficial to you, when in the Digital Age, people can easily copy and paste what you did and make it theirs. 

Unfortunately, I believe that the “older proprietary ways of thinking [that] condemn this practice with the fear that your ideas would be swiped”, which Goldsmith talks about, are not so old. I say that, due to the fact that, nowadays, there are so many readings that could be easily found on the Internet, that people can just take that opinion or work and make theirs and only a certain number of people (a certain community) would know that and would do something about it, if they read the person’s work, the rest wouldn’t. 

Thinking of this, it might be the case that people not only charge to share their work on the Internet, because of financial issues (of course), but also because of authorship, that is, making sure they get credit for their work. 

There is certainly a fine line between the benefits and disadvantages of free sharing on the Internet and as everything, the difficulty is finding the right balance.