How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Hackers
Carla Diana
Georgia Institute of Technology | carla@carladiana.com
[ 1] Saffo, Paul, “Farewell
Information, It’s a Media
Age,” December 2005.
Saffo.com. http://www.
saffo.com/essays/
essay_farewellinfo.pdf
(Dec 2007)
[ 2] Davis, Joshua
“Dynamic Abstraction.”
Presentation at the
Flash on the Beach conference, Brighton, U. K.,
November 5, 2007.
March + April 2008
Designers are a unique breed: We
take pride in our flexible attitude
and ability to be disciplinary
ambassadors, but we are often
so easily seduced by process
that we can get set in our ways.
Though having a strong sense
of what “designerly” means is
an important aspect of creating
professional results, focusing too
closely on this definition may
prevent us from embracing work
that doesn’t quite appeal to our
sensibilities. The current hacker-inspired DIY movement is an
example of this, and this ground-swell of activity has become too
important to be ignored.
As disciplinary boundaries blur and we approach what
forecaster Paul Saffo describes
as a “creator’s economy” [ 1], we
as designers face an interesting
situation where there may actually be more creativity happening
around us than there is inside
our own offices and studios. This
peripheral activity may not be
design in a traditional sense (or
in a billable sense), but in some
ways it actually embodies the
exploratory spirit of design better
than our own professional practice. Are these emerging hacker-explorers starting to outcreate
the creatives?
to speak about the patterns
he had recently incorporated
into his work [ 2]. Davis was an
American guest lecturer invited
specifically to expound upon his
appreciation of Japanese graphic
motifs. The moral of the story
was familiar: It sometimes takes
an outsider to point out something that is right under our
noses. Though these were the
very patterns that appeared on
the floors and tile work that his
hosts could see every day in or
near their own homes, it took an
outsider to truly celebrate them.
I had a similar experience
when I first moved to San
Francisco in 2005. In addition
to the Bay Area being a hotbed of geek culture, it was a
pivotal time in product-design
history—when the confluence
of broadband availability, wireless internet access, and ubiquitous screens made the “smart
products” that we dreamt up in
utopian student projects and
hypothetical design scenarios a
reality. In my new home I was
thrilled to see the roles of artists,
designers, and technologists so
seamlessly blur into one another
through local events and collaborative projects. At the same
time, I was stunned to see how
little attention my colleagues in
the interaction-design world paid
to it. In their eyes, I was off to my
“funny little meetings” to hang
out with the geeks and the hack-
ers and their current curiosities,
but I certainly didn’t see my collection of extracurricular activities as particularly out of place.
In fact, I believed these activities to be must-see examples of
design exploration. They were
exuberant displays of visionary
exercises. They were elegant
slices of innovative thought, and
they had everything to do with
contemporary design practice.
DIY Renaissance
Fast-forward a couple of years,
and I can see that there is more
awareness among design firms
of how hacker-inspired art and
technology efforts can provide an
excellent playground for inspiration and experiments in cultural
change. Nonetheless, there is
still a reluctance to seek this
inspiration on a regular basis. In
the meantime the creative geek/
hacker/tinkerer subculture has
exploded, and the technological DIY spirit that was once the
almost exclusive domain of the
Bay Area and elite technology
institutions has spread to cities
throughout the world.
Resources for Information
“Okay, great,” you may say, “so
where can I get some?” Well, for
In Our Backyard
At a recent design conference,
digital illustrator Joshua Davis
told a story about going to Japan
The “Thimbletron” DIY Interactive Gloves
by artist Trademark G. were on view at the
2005 Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA.