Why do we make things?
An extremely broad question. Allow me to whittle it down a bit. By ‘we’ I mean those of us tinkering at the intersection of design, technology, and human experience. And the made things I’m referring to can consist of digital constructs in any context capable of influencing our behavior and relationships.
Why does this particular ‘we’ make these particular things?
I have my own answer to the question, though it’s a breathing thing that crawls around and changes shape to no end, despite my constant efforts to pin it down. I suspect many of the digital makers I most admire have wonderful answers to this question, and when given the chance I always try to ask them. A solid answer to this question is often at the heart of any product, platform, or project worth its salt. So yes, there is a substantive pile of viable, imaginative, even brilliant answers to this question from individual points of view. That said, I’d like to make a simple claim which presents a massive challenge for the future of every digital thing, and more critically, for everyone using these digital things.
‘We’ as a whole do not have an answer to the question of why ‘we’ make the things we do. If we do, it’s not good enough. Digital makers need a shared ethos.
Much of what I’m embarking to say here might seem highly dogmatic. So before we get into the thick of the matter, a few quick points of departure. Consider them seasoning for all the words that follow.
John Berger once wrote:
“Never again will a single story be told as if it’s the only one.”
I am not advocating a single view, a rulebook, a new digi-religion to sweep the land. I am advocating a disciplined search for common ground around the aforementioned question, no more no less.
The other bit of seasoning – my two preferred definitions for the word ‘ethos’:
Now, back to that pesky question. Why do we, being the architects of the digital world, make things?
Let’s discard the mundane and obvious answer of money. There’s no shortage of that dialogue elsewhere. Let’s just assume and accept that a natural outcome for most, at some point or other, can and probably should involve heaps of the stuff. Go make it rain.
So why, aside from money, do we make things?
The most common answer, spoken or not, is simply to exercise a craft. I’m a designer, so I design. I’m a writer, so I write. I’m a coder, so I code. I make things within the context of my craft and I strive to make them better. That’s beautiful and essential. Keep doing it. As an answer to our question, though, it’s near worthless. It does nothing to get us closer to defining a collective digital ethos. Let’s also assume and accept that we all can and should be exercising and bettering our respective crafts. Just remember to break for fresh air and green grass once in awhile. Go do it now if you like.
Why do we make things?
Because technology is amazing. Because so much new stuff is possible. Because we can connect everything and everyone and everywhere like never before. And it’s on us to figure it out. Ok, sure. Discovery is magic. It’s also steeped in our very essence as ambitious human beings. It’s a given. So as an answer to the riddle I’ve posed, it’s also another ruse. Let’s assume we have a natural inclination, and in turn, a responsibility, to discover and invent. Eureka.
Why do we do it?
Perhaps another question will help us find a more substantive answer.
Who do we make things for?
I’m a decade in on my own path of learning to make these things. And I’ve only realized recently, over the past year or two, how important this question is to me on a personal and even emotional level. In fact, attempting to answer this question, relentlessly, has become the only thing I really care about in the context of my work. I don’t care about the intricacies of design and code, or the software, or the layers, or even the strategy or content (noting that those last two have become my primary craft). I can only think about that stuff so much before I start wanting to turn off the internet forever and escape into my new life as a beet farmer or writer or dive instructor (I’ve never been diving) or whatever else can be done without a screen.
Granted, the individual ingredients of the craft are essential and should be treated with care. I don’t mean to imply otherwise. I recognize that learning and perfecting the application of these ingredients is a gargantuan, truly endless task. And for that reason, I accept the very real need to master every nook and cranny of process and product, inside and out, hopefully within a team of complimentary expertise. But these details of process and product really only matter to us, the makers. They don’t matter even one little bit to the receiver of the thing being made, which constitutes most of the people on this planet. So these ingredients, these learned things, these applied processes — they deserve to be colored by a deliberate vision. The choices we make, the minutiae of making things, should be filtered and influenced by something that matters. And what matters more than the people we’re making things for? Including ourselves.
These details of process and product really only matter to us, the makers. They don’t matter even one little bit to the receiver of the thing being made, which constitutes most of the people on this planet.
I awoke early this morning, in the midst of writing this, to the news of what will likely prove to be an historic earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The images are, as someone whom I already can’t recall wrote on Twitter, haunting and humbling.
Precisely one week ago today, I awoke in a little bungalow on a black sand beach on the volcanic island of Tanna, Vanuatu, located just over 1,000 miles east of Northern Australia in the South Pacific. This particular island was easily the most remote, raw and beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I traveled there with my friend, Benjamin Reece, for a short film project we were commissioned to produce. The trip was brief and harried, but also life affirming and refreshing, as the best kinds of travel always venture to be.
On this particular day, a Friday, one week ago as I’ve said, our local guide and driver took us to his village. His name was Tsong (or Song – I’m not sure which) and he appeared to carry an impressive gravity on the island. He was an important man here, but to us he had a calm and humble air. He showed us the simple workings of his village.
A giant wild pig was being kept and fed for an upcoming circumcision ritual for his grandchildren. The boys looked on with wide smiles. We looked at them with playful fear. Tsong called his children to the village center and told them to call the chickens. In messy unison, a half dozen or so bright eyed munchkins, sparkling as though they were born directly, magically, from the black sand beach below, began calling out in what can best be likened to a noise a cartoon owl might make.
Some of the bungalows in the village had been destroyed only weeks prior in a cyclone. The damage was still on display. One woman, perhaps Tsong’s wife, was weaving bamboo leaves to make a roof for their new home. Tsong, with no fuss or show, pointed out the frame he had built “in a day or two”, which would soon support her new roof. In times of need, he explained, all of the women in the village come together, and nestled on the ground side by side, they can weave an entire roof of impressive dimensions in just one day.
The primary focus of our film involved meeting people and asking them a simple question. What is your happy place, what is happiness to you? Tsong’s answer, which he gave to us under a tree in the middle of his village, with his four daughters watching nearby, was perhaps my favorite of the hundreds of responses we filmed. To paraphrase, he said that young people always think they have to find the future, to find new things and places, in order to find happiness. But, and he lit up as he said this, the future is the past, what matters is timeless, and whether it is a place or a people or both, happiness is home. It is knowing a place intimately and understanding how to truly be alive in that place.
The youngest children played with water from a hose. I’ve never seen any child with any toy look happier than those children looked.
A dozen boys, slightly older, were playing soccer in a dirt clearing for the hour or so that we spent exploring the village. They played tirelessly, with no shoes, and they can play all day.
After leaving the village, Tsong wanted to show us something else. He said that his family had moved up the island over generations, and that the village we’d just seen was actually a new village. He now thought we should see the original village, the one he was born in around 60 years ago, and the one he had never taken any visitors to before.
If you saw a picture of a road on Tanna, you’d likely not know to call it a road. They’re more like suggestions or dares. It’s as if some fickle god poured a bucket of water on a mountain of sand, watched to see what winding cracks and crevices were formed, and then created a bunch of tiny people to try to traverse them in a wicked game. In other words, the roads are insane. My father, an excellent driver and civil engineer, would almost certainly declare them impassable.
The road to Tsong’s home village, the place of his birth, was the worst we’d seen during our three days on the island. The distance between this place and the earlier village may have been less than a kilometer, but the trip by truck took half an hour. In case this doesn’t go without saying, Tsong now also has the distinction of being the most skilled driver I have ever met.
Waisisi. This was the place. A tiny smattering of bungalows, a few corrugated steel shelters, some random charms and detritus of modern civilization, a single TV under a makeshift roof where the children occasionally watch music videos. Most notably, and most beautifully, a pristine black sand beach pouring into a pristine bay, surrounded on all sides by ancient trees, scattered banyans, sunlight, warmth, smiles. From a hundred yards away, we could see a few dozen babies and toddlers playing in the waves, their dark skin shining and sun kissed as if they’d already spent many lifetimes under it. Another group of children and old men drew towards us out of curiosity, and then found places to rest in the shade of trees hanging over the water’s edge.
After taking some photos, we convinced a bunch of the children, all boys I think, to group together and answer our little question for the camera. They bunched up under the fuzz of the boom microphone, and listened while Tsong translated our question to the local dialect (there are 47 variants of the language on Tanna alone). Their response, laughter, followed by a single shared shout, again in sloppy unison like the earlier chicken calls. No translation needed.
One of the more striking things about this visit was a hint at what we weren’t seeing. Most of the beach had been bowled over with large rocks as a result of the same recent cyclone. That gorgeous black sand beach, the best I’ve ever laid eyes on, was just a fraction of the full beach that wraps the bay in normal conditions. This helped to explain, for example, the location of a rope swing hung to nowhere and a slight feeling of displacement amongst the locals.
Not to worry though, they said, the beach will be back soon. No telling the length of soon for them.
Just now, as I write, there are reports of a tsunami warning for all of Vanuatu, for all of the Pacific actually, as a result of this morning’s earthquake in Japan. And so the emphasis of this writing has shifted notably in accordance with my thoughts and prayers for the people of Vanuatu, and particularly given its remoteness and the lack of shelter or communication, the island of Tanna. For those children on the black sand beach in Waisisi.
What has already proven to be a massive disaster for the people of Japan, may or may not prove the same for the wonderfully open and giving people I met there just a few days ago. I certainly think of them as friends now, so I’m afraid for them. I wish that their homes and happiness might be only mildly disturbed as they run to high ground in the depths of the night.
I ask again. What is the role of digital? Why do we make things?
The answer becomes much clearer when a human problem of massive scale tears through our daily routine. Is there a better reminder of the need to place people at the center of our designs?
I haven’t watched the news this morning, not in any traditional format at least. I first learned of the disaster from a photo posted by my friend, the incredible photographer and storyteller, Paul Octavious. I’ve since followed the storyline online, primarily via Twitter. As I posted there a few hours ago myself, the messages read as urgent dispatches.
The degree to which Twitter has grown to serve as essential in circumstances like these is remarkable but not surprising. To a measure far beyond any other digital tool or platform that I’m aware of, it is a beacon for intensely relevant, local, and timely information.
Facebook has also been touted by the tech milieu and media as an essential tool for humanitarian movements and response in times of crisis. I agree with the description, but see a very important distinction between the two platforms.
Twitter has become essential in critical circumstances because of its design. Facebook has done the same despite its design, through force of scale.
Why is this so? Because one is the result of a humble offering, in its beginnings at least, with a simple and open aim to channel individual messages with little to no friction. And the other is the result of hubris, of an incredibly presumptuous attempt to map, to design, to construct, and then to manage and sell our relationships and interactions.
As I’ve said in countless discussions with friends and a few formal talks, I disavow the notion that technology should change our lives. Technology should improve our lives in small, meaningful ways. It should nudge, provoke, surprise, inform, and yes, connect on a grand scale. But it should not presume to know too much.
I disavow the notion that technology should change our lives. Technology should improve our lives in small, meaningful ways.
When we, the makers, get that part right, the stuff we make sings. And we see that the people using these things are at their best. They sing too. When we get that part wrong, the outcomes are at best fickle and capricious, and at worst very frightening. They certainly aren’t timeless.
The beautiful faces and voices I came to know in Waisisi are proof positive that digital does not a happy human make. At its best, though, it can help to protect and improve the lives of even those who know nothing of it.
I’m still not sure just how to define the shared ethos I’m searching for, the one I urge anyone working to build our digital world to help me find. But I do believe there’s something of it in the terrible news many of us woke up to hear today, and in the ways we’ve learned to share it. As many of us wish and pray for these people, I hope our priorities in the things we make are with the people we make them for.
——
Nathan Heleine is the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Crush + Lovely. If so inclined, follow his updates on Twitter.
Image: A banyan tree on the island of Tanna, Vanuata. Taken by the author.
© 2011 Crush + Lovely 
Made for Humans
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