Embracing Technology

One of my main motivations for writing is to explore my studio mission and values as a way to better articulate my philosophy as a designer. Embracing technology is part of being a Vanguard - my first studio value. This essay is by no means my entire philosophy, simply one piece of the puzzle that will continue to evolve over time. Technology is an expansive topic that I’m sure I’ll write about more in the future, but for now, this marks the beginning of a series on my studio values.

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Humans Are Tool Builders

Occasionally, I find myself watching old clips of Steve Jobs. There's the famous one of Steve discussing the efficiency of movement where a human riding a bicycle beats out all other animals on the planet. “The computer is like a bicycle for the mind,” Steve says. He goes on to explain that “humans are tool builders.” It’s what separates us from all the other species on the planet.

the graph Steve references from 1973 Scientific American

We’re tool builders, and I love a new tool. There’s something so exciting about trying out a new innovation or emerging technology. My mind is filled with all the design opportunities and unlocked potential. Technology has been a consistent theme throughout my career and my life in general. I remember the magical glow of powering on my first Apple product (the iPod Nano 3rd gen in black). I remember the first time one of my designs went viral opening my eyes to the immense power of the internet. I remember the feeling of trying the Oculus Rift and instantly being sold. I remember getting early access to Midjourney and obsessively generating images for four straight days. And while I’m certainly not coding software or building computers like Steve, I like to think of myself as someone who champions the tool builders. I am a “technology brother” as they say. I celebrate the scientists, engineers, and founders creating new innovations that push humanity forward.

Design and Technology

Now, don’t get it twisted, I love design more. Every great technology needs an elegant and thoughtful application. Both design and technology work in tandem to shape and improve the world around us. Without technology, designers would continue to rehash the same old products, and without design, technologists would struggle to create beautiful and relevant implementations of their ideas. This has lead me to the realization that—

One of the greatest things we can do as designers is to embrace technology and make it beautiful.

Many great designers of the past had one thing in common; each used the latest technologies of their time. The Eames used bent plywood to create beautiful human curves in their chairs. Breuer utilized tube bending technology of the bicycle to create his Wassily chair. Rams brought the clarity of clear acrylic as both functional and decorative elements to Braun electronics. Steve Jobs and Jony Ive used multitouch to create the modern smartphone archetype we all use today. It’s easy to take these seemingly obvious design decisions for granted, but at the time they were truly revolutionary and often disruptive. These great designers were curious about the technologies of their time, thought laterally, and implemented the latest innovations in new ways, ultimately making a huge impact through their designs.

Fear of Technology

As designers, we see new technology as an opportunity to improve our designs and craft a better world, but not everyone sees things this way. I’m sure it wouldn’t take long to stumble upon a funny meme about how *insert new technology* is going to ruin humanity. It’s all in good jest, but on occasion, I’ll run across someone who is genuinely angry about the latest thing. To be fair, there are many legitimate reasons to be concerned about new innovations, but this story has played out countless times. There are early 2000s clips of news anchors saying the internet is a fad. French newspapers wrote stories claiming the Wright Brothers faked their first flight. The Catholic Church tried to control the printing presses and censor heretical ideas during the Reformation. The list goes on.

Humans have always resisted new technology. Technology disrupts and changes our lives, change is unknown, and the unknown is scary. When we’re young we have nothing to lose, so technology is exciting and promising, but as we age we get comfortable and have more to lose. Change becomes a threat. It’s been this way since our earliest ancestors, and fear is an instinctual reaction to it. So I really can’t blame us, resistance to technology comes baked into our DNA.

We are at our best when we push through our fear of the unknown and take the risk to experiment and build new technologies. Now I’m not going to go full techno-optimist here, I’ll leave that to the professionals, but I do believe that technology is a net positive force for humanity. Every new tool we’ve created, whether it’s fire, the printing press, the automobile, or the computer, has undoubtedly been used for both good and evil. And certainly, with every new advancement, came new problems and challenges. But here’s the thing, we don’t live in caves anymore, we don’t have to hunt or farm crops, we have access to unlimited information in the palm of our hand, and we can travel across the world in less than a day. All things considered, the tools we once called technology have raised our quality of life. We would simply not exist if our ancestors had been afraid to innovate, persevere, and build the things we take for granted today.

Technology Resistance Curve

Over the past couple years, I feel like my generation is increasingly resistant to embracing new technology. I’ve certainly seen plenty of resistance online when I first used virtual reality or minted my work as NFTs. I’ve read the debates on whether AI generated design should be considered “real” design, or if it’s stealing from artists. Maybe it’s just the algorithm of social media boosting fear and negativity for clicks. Maybe people are just bored and want to complain about the current thing. Maybe this resistance is just the result of getting older and seeing my contemporaries get settled in their ways. Maybe it’s resentment between people getting a paycheck from big tech and people who pursued other paths. Or maybe it’s the exponential pace of technology that’s all so tiresome to keep up with. Whatever the reason may be, it’s made me think more deeply about my perspective on technology.

I decided to draw this graph to help me explain my thoughts on this resistance and our role as designers. I call it the Technology Resistance Curve. It’s similar to the adoption curve, but shows that as technology advances over time, it meets public resistance, until eventually overcoming that resistance to become a normal everyday tool.

Every technology starts out as weird and useless. As it develops, the first sign of resistance will be the classic “it’s just a fad” or “it’ll never work.” Tech often takes years or decades to develop beyond this. It may need a scientific breakthrough, the right application, or a way to monetize, but eventually any sufficiently useful, fully realized technology finds traction. This is when the technology begins to get major pushback from the public. This is when people get angry. This is the “it will take our jobs” or “it’s a danger to humanity” stage. Depending on the tech, resistance can peak at some attempt from institutions or governments to control or regulate the technology. Eventually, despite the resistance, the tech becomes widespread, safe, and useful enough to coast down the hill, becoming a common quality of life product we all use without second thought.

It’s our job as designers to chip away at that hill of resistance. For some technologies the hills are small, for others they are mountains. We should strive to exist on the left side of the graph, always curious and experimenting, taking the weird half-baked musings of scientists, engineers, or founders and turning those inventions into delightful products. If it wasn’t for us we’d still be lighting our homes with bare bulbs and sitting in ugly uncomfortable chairs (I think I just described a trendy burger joint). When the public is afraid of a new technology, that’s partly a failure of designers. It’s our role to make things that the world is excited about, things that are beautiful and considered, things that inspire. We are the ones that make technology human.

Reducing Resistance

The technologies of our time are drastically different from the manufacturing innovations of the 20th century. We still have plenty of physical innovations like the rise of 3D printing and new sustainable materials, but during our era, we’ve seen the explosion of digital technologies. The way I see it, there are generally two ways we can embrace technology to make beautiful products.

1. Design the technology

A small percentage of designers get the opportunity to design the technology itself. These are the designers who team up with founders developing emerging tech on the left side of the graph—turning crazy moonshot ideas into inviting and exciting products. A classic example is the iMac G3. The colorful translucent plastic made the computer friendly, and the handle on the back gave people permission to touch it. It was something you’d happily use in your home, a revolutionary concept at the time, shifting the perception that computers only belonged in the office.

2. Design with technology

Most designers (including myself) are designing products on the right side of the graph—products that were considered new technology at some point but are now staples of everyday life. Just because we’re designing chairs, shoes, or toasters, doesn’t mean we can’t embrace technology. The obvious solution is to explore new materials and manufacturing innovations, but our true advantage is utilizing new digital tools to enhance our workflow. If you talk to any older designer, you can hear stories about the rise of CAD programs and how it ushered in a new wave of design. Digital technologies like AI and VR are no different. They can enhance our workflow by allowing us to design and iterate faster, giving us more time to evaluate and refine, ultimately leading to better products.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with teams developing new groundbreaking technologies, and I certainly would jump at a similar opportunity. But, as you may know, my passion lies in more traditional products like furniture and housewares. There are so many ways to share the beauty of human ingenuity that goes beyond the object itself. When I’m designing a chair or lamp, I often embrace technology through storytelling. I share how I design with VR or experiment with AI, all while posting the process online. The design isn’t just the chair, it’s the whole story of seeing it come to life. Each time someone sees a VR video of mine and realizes that it can be an actual tool (instead of a toy for playing video games), it’s a small step that reduces resistance with every view.

Old School vs. New School

I sometimes find myself in a tug of war between embracing new technology or romanticizing traditional methods. In the furniture world, there’s this tendency to design the “old school” way—like you have to be smoking a cigarette at an Italian café scribbling something on a napkin for it to be considered “good” design. I’m half joking, but I do think there’s this level of prestige applied to the great designers of the past and how they worked.

I stumbled upon this article about Eero Aarnio while obsessing over his Pastil chair (he has so many bangers). I found the article a bit surprising but also delightful because Aarnio is simply trying out early CAD software to design a quite mundane chair. Seeing a great designer like Aarnio in the ‘80s earnestly play around with a computer made me realize that the many great designers of the past were no different than us. If the Eames were in our generation, they wouldn’t be experimenting with molded plywood, they would be 3D printing chairs or making mini-films about the wonders of virtual reality.

It’s not a tug of war between technology and tradition. We can embrace both. Pen and paper still reigns supreme, and likely will for the foreseeable future. I still love building things with my hands and hot gluing little paper models together. But I also love designing in VR because it allows me to work through some bad ideas before I start building with my hands. Technology helps us augment our abilities and streamline our process so we can spend even more time on the poetic parts of design.

Make Technology Beautiful

Now, I don’t expect all designers to embrace every one of the latest and greatest innovations. Heck, even I struggle to keep up with the youth (TikTok melts my brain). Maybe some technologies just aren’t your cup of tea. Maybe you have a family or hobbies and are focused on other priorities. I totally get it. It’s not always easy or exciting to keep up, but a little curiosity and openness goes a long way in helping technologies reach the rest of us.

Technology is a force for good, but it needs design to make it human. We are uniquely equipped to explore the latest innovations, apply them in new ways, and create thoughtful products the world is excited about. We bridge the gap between the crazy genius inventions and the tangible tools of everyday life. Whether we are designing the next groundbreaking tech innovation or simply just playing around with the latest design tool, it’s our job to reduce the resistance and fear of the unknown. Technology is inevitable, because after all, humans are tool builders. And despite tech’s many problems and challenges, we only exist today because our predecessors persevered and built incredible inventions that allowed humanity to thrive. Now it’s our turn to embrace technology and make it beautiful for countless generations to come.

- Nicholas Baker