current consumerist binge cannot be sustained, we need to create academic programs that are focused on helping students see what can be, instead of leading them to be dependent on what has been.

In order to move forward it is time to clearly communicate and leverage the imperatives facing humankind and to frame solutions to these problems through a new way of thinking about designed interactions. Some may offer that technology will provide the answers needed to buy ourselves out of this situation. But to those who look to (or hope for) technology that evolves out of our continued exploitation to solve the problems inherent in our current consumerist model, I’d offer that our most serious environmental challenges are the direct result of the technologies that created the model in the first place. As only one example, new technology in the form of biofuels has been proposed to maintain the continued use of the internal combustion engine. But in so doing, there are troublesome issues surrounding availability of other resources, including land, food, and most concerning, water.

Technologies that create new problems that displace the old problems should not be considered. We should not be robbing Peter to pay Paul. Furthermore, technology as a panacea for every problem also ignores our own need for humanity as a component of the solution. Heidegger’s post–World War II observations about technology being a means to an end were never more timely than now. His essay “On the Question of Technology” and his prescient

observations on the threat of consumerism resonate even more powerfully today than they did more than 50 years ago, especially as we give up on the idea that technology should serve only as a means to an end. We’ve instead embraced the notion of technology as an end in itself by grossly accelerating both obsolescence and depreciation in exchange for instant gratification.

As Heidegger put it, in “our sheer preoccupation with technology we do not yet experience the coming to presence of technology.” Such a thought does not bode well and warns us of the risk that technology for its own sake will consume us before we know it has happened. Indeed, the current path is without end until there is nothing left to consume but ourselves. There are those who might argue that it’s already happened. If so, we will need to back ourselves out of a very deep hole.

Without sounding apocalyptic, the sooner we can push away from the notion that happiness or peace of mind can be bought in the objects that we consume and surround ourselves with, the less painful the transition will be to a more sustainable model. We need to be much more brutally honest with each other about how we, as members of a global community, must shape our future and our lives at all levels, including those most intimate—those that shape our most human and humane interactions.

 

New Interaction Imperatives What can be done to transition interaction design to the academic model we need for

the future? In order to be deliberate about how we do such a thing, we need to clearly communicate the aforementioned environmental a priori imperatives. Certainly with increasing focus on the problem it will become evident that new models are needed quickly. To that end, those interested in finding solutions must find venues to collaborate for the purpose of fomenting a consistent dialogue that reaches a broad constituency of stakeholders. Providing the places for collaboration and leadership has always been the responsibility of the world’s educational systems; having long abdicated that responsibility to the very interests that have perpetuated the current dying model, collaboration and leadership are a responsibility that education needs to take up again.

In order to progress, academics need to further insist on the right to establish new curricular and assessment paradigms rather than blindly follow existing ones. And institutions need to allow these new models the opportunity to develop assessment schema in an independent fashion that encourages innovation and ideation, not dutiful subscription to predetermined outcomes that will only constrain the process. With interaction design, as with most programs that touch on issues associated with old consumer models, the conversation is one that should purposely develop a more thoughtful and strategic use of curriculum to support programs whose students will be able to synthesize solutions in ways that can be measured not only academically and pro-