The Realness in Design

I’ve somehow managed to not see Bladerunner until a little bit ago. The thing that I liked most about it was that it presented not a pretty bland, middle class vision of the future. It was autocratic, messy, big and Chinese. Yes there were robots, but people didn’t live with them. They hated them and treated them like a hated minority, that is they wanted to wipe them out. It was much more of realistic portrayal of human nature not changing all that much a number of years from now.

Where is the single mom of two in design? How is it I met the first black interaction designer of my life a only a year ago? Where are the slums, the sitting in front of the TV, the drunk out of your mind because you can’t bear to go home to your wife?

What we typically are peddled by designers as the future is usually pretty bland and pretty middle class. It’s pretty funny how indicative of who is “inventing” this future. Ostensibly, this is by bland, thoroughly middle class designers. Can’t say that I don’t fit into this category, because I’m also a bland, thoroughly middle class designer, but being a guy who’s more concerned with doing stuff today instead of worrying about something that will never come, I have to say this is probably one of the reasons for my dislike of all this “futurism” hoo-haw.