Design and Ethics:
Sealed-Off Thinking
Leslie Becker
California College of the Arts | lbecker@cca.edu
Designers of products and services, as well as the users of these
products and services, think they
know what is right. This assumption is largely tacit, which means
it is also largely unexamined.
Tacit implies that we have absorbed
something through our daily living by observing and participating in routine activities that have
socialized us and provided us with
the kinds of practical knowledge
that help us get through the day.
There is also a geographical
component to how we think about
what is right. Geography operates at
multiple scales, from our immediate
family, to social scenes (as ethnographers label them), to the choice of
schools we attend and our majors of
study, to employers, and ultimately,
to the literal geographic location
where we live. This observation does
not imply we have complete control
over each of these social groups we
inhabit, but often there are subtle
cues that tend to guide us toward
certain life choices that turn out to
be significant, especially if we look
for them in retrospect.
Eventually, most of us find our-
selves in the equivalent of a sealed
plastic bag, or a set of sealed plastic
bags, constituted by the various
groups we inhabit. Within each
group, though typically not explicit,
is a large likelihood of a priori sen-
sibilities and worldviews operating
among the group that has drawn
any individual member into it, or,
in the case of family, has landed
an individual into a psychologically
powerful group without that indi-
vidual having chosen membership.
Therefore, when an action must be
taken, a group will typically oper-
ate with a degree of efficiency when
faced with the question, “What
should we do?” We identify a typical-
ly shared problem. We decide what
to do. And we do it. This kind of
process mostly guarantees a general
consensus because we have already
situated ourselves inside of reinforc-
ing groups—those groups that are
based upon interests, needs, and
goals coincident with our own.
March + April 2012
