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<td height="94" valign="top" width="646"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font size="2"><font color="#FF0000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="5">The
politics of the Artificial.</font></font></span><i><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></i></td>
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<td height="34" valign="top" width="646"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="3"><b>by
Victor Margolin</b></font></o:p></span></td>
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<p><br>
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Introduction
If we consider design to be the "conception and planning of the artificial,"
a definition which I developed with my colleague Richard Buchanan, then
its scope and boundaries are intimately entwined with our understanding
of the artificial's limits. That is to say, in extending the domain within
which we conceive and plan, we are widening the boundaries of design practice.
To the degree that design makes incursions into realms that were once
considered as belonging to nature rather than culture, so does the conceptual
scope of design practice widen. </font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Until recent
years, the distinction between nature and culture appeared to be clear,
with design, of course, belonging to the realm of culture. The concept
of design, as it was initially developed by early theorists such as Henry
Cole, one of the chief promoters of the British Crystal Palace Exhibition
of 1851, was a static one that was inextricably bound to the object. Cole
thought the purpose of design was to improve the appearance of products
and he hoped to confront the confusion and profusion of historic styles
that were being loaded onto Victorian objects from furniture to steam
engines by promoting a closer collaboration between artists and industry.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">With Cole
begins a discourse about objects, particularly about how they should look,
that continues well into the twentieth century. It is echoed in Charles
Eastlake's exhortations for simple forms and honest representations of
materials, Herman Muthesius's call for an industrial form language, and
Adolf Loos's antagonism to ornament. Closer to home, we can see it at
work in the products of the American consultant designers of the 1930s
such as Walter Dorwin Teague and Raymond Loewy and in the resistance to
those products by the design staff at the Museum of Modern Art. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Although
the modernist belief in simplicity was turned on its head by the expressive
furniture of such groups as Studio Alchymia and Memphis in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, the terms of the discourse were still focused on objects.
It was this emphasis which gave rise to the profession of industrial design
that we have known until recently <a href="#ref">[1]</a>. But this project has been implicitly and explicitly
challenged by various theorists such as Herbert Simon and John Chris Jones,
who have argued that a process of design underlies everything in our culture,
both material and immaterial. Simon has gone so far as to call design
a new "science of the artificial," a proposal that provoked the title
of my essay <a href="#2">[2]</a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Where Simon
and Jones proposed a broadening of design's subject matter to embrace
all that which we might call the artificial, other theorists have questioned
design's meaning. In the discourse of the modernists, the locus of meaning
was twofold: form and function, for which we might substitute the theoretical
terms aesthetics and pragmatics. Early modernist designers believed that
meaning was embedded in the object rather than negotiated in the relation
between the object and a user. Objects were considered to be signs of
value with uncontested referents such as clarity, beauty, integrity, simplicity,
economy of means and function. The reductive slogan "form follows function"
assumed that use was an explicit, unambiguous term. Thus, the meaning
of objects was to be found in their relation to a value that was grounded
in belief. Poststructuralism challenged that idea of grounded belief,
as well as our right to use "meaning," as if it were a term that itself
did not raise questions about the possible conditions of its use. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Besides the
slippery subject matter of design and the questions regarding the conditions
under which we can talk about its meaning, we must also confront a more
difficult problem at the heart of the politics of the artificial, and
that is the nature of reality. For the "first modernity,"---and here I
will use Italian theorist Andrea Branzi's distinction between two modernities---reality
was an uncontested term <a href="#3">[3]</a>. It was the stable ground for the attribution of meaning
to objects, images and acts. Today, this is no longer the case, and any
mention of "reality" must be qualified by conditions, just as the use
of the term "meaning" must be; hence, we are unclear as to how or whether
boundaries can be drawn around the real or authentic as a basis of meaning.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">When Herbert
Simon called for a new science of the artificial in 1969, he described
nature as the ground of meaning against which a science of the artificial
or a broadly conceived practice of design would be defined. "Natural science,"
he wrote, "is knowledge about natural objects and phenomena" <a href="#4">[4]</a>.The artificial, on the other hand, was about objects and
phenomena invented by humans. The difference between the two was clear
to Simon, although his implicit positivist construction of the natural
was also the model for his explicit methodology of design. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The critique
of scientific discourse mounted by Paul Feyerabend, Donna Haraway, Stanley
Aronowitz and others has since called into question the way we claim to
know nature as real. This critique has at least succeeded in contesting
the easy equation of the natural with the real and has thus made references
to nature more difficult without qualifications. By focusing on scientific
thought as a linguistic construct, critics have attempted to challenge
a previous faith in scientific truth. Hence we have two contested terms---
"meaning" and "reality"---that severely undermine the certainties on which
a theory and practice of design was built in the first modernity. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Since we
can no longer talk about design as if these terms were not in question,
a new discourse is needed, although the way that discourse will develop
as a reflection on design practice is not yet clear. However, I believe
the central theme to be addressed in this new discourse is the artificial
and its boundaries. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The Boundary
Problem In the first of his MIT Compton Lectures, Herbert Simon characterized
natural science as descriptive, as concerned "solely with how things are,"
while he defined a science of the artificial as "normative" in its engagement
with human goals and questions of how things ought to be. The two were
differentiated by the term "should," which marked the task of humans to
invent the artificial world in order to achieve their own goals while
honoring the parallel purpose of the natural world. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Simon defined
four indicia to distinguish the artificial from the natural. Three of
these define the artificial as the result of human agency. Simon said
that artificial things result from an act of making, which he called synthesis,
while the act of observing, analysis, is the way humans relate to nature.
Furthermore, he characterized the artificial by "functions, goals, adaptation,"
and discussed it "in terms of imperatives as well as descriptives" <a href="#5">[5]</a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">When Simon
compared the artificial to the natural, he posited the natural as an uncontested
term, arguing that the artificial "may imitate appearances in natural
things while lacking, in one or many respects, the reality of the latter"
<a href="#6">[6]</a>. As I have already mentioned, the equation of the natural
with the real has been heavily contested in recent years, most notably
by poststructuralists and deconstructionists. Roland Barthes's and Michel
Foucault's challenge to authorial intentions in literature and art, Jean
Baudrillard's claim that simulacra are signs without referents, and Jean-
Francois Lyotard's refusal to acknowledge any metanarratives or "grands
recits" that shape social values all exemplify this tendency, as does
Donna Haraway's discourse on cyborg culture. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">While these
attacks on the real legitimately challenged implicit assumptions of positivist
thought that closed out many of the voices that now constitute our cultural
community, they also strove to abolish any presence---whether we call
it nature, God, or spirit--- that might exist beyond the frame of a socially
constructed discourse. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Hence, Donna
Haraway, in her 1985 essay "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," could argue for
the cyborg, a hybrid of human and machine, as "a fiction mapping our social
and bodily reality" <a href="#7">[7]</a>, and Gianni Vattimo, the Italian philosopher who has postulated
"il pensiero debole," or "weak thought," as the appropriate philosophy
for the postmodern era, can claim that "only where there is no terminal
or interrupting instance of the highest value (God) to block the process
may values be displayed in their true nature, namely as possessing the
capacity for convertibility and an indefinite transformability or processuality"
<a href="#8">[8]</a>. Vattimo concludes from his readings of Nietzsche and
Heidegger that "Nihilism is thus the reduction of Being to exchange-value"
<a href="#9">[9]</a>. He does not mean this in the mercantile sense of selling
the self but in terms of the self's convertibility without a ground such
as nature or God against which it can be defined. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">We also find
evidence of this in William Gibson's cyberpunk novel <strong>Neuromancer</strong>,
where the artificial is unbounded by any presence outside it. Gibson's
characters have no grounding in the real; they are constructed of motives
and impulses that are facilitated by the manipulation of artificial products.
While some characters are more human than others, none possess any inherent
resistance to the incursion of the artificial in their bodies or their
lives and some, like the AI Wintermut (an Artificial Intelligence that
intervenes in social life), are totally artificial. Part of the fascination
with <strong>Neuromancer</strong> outside the cyberpunk milieu is Gibson's
portrayal of a world in which the artificial is dominant and where the
ability to manipulate it is the most potent human activity <a href="#10">[10] </a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><strong>Neuromancer</strong>
offers us a scenario of design triumphant in a world where the real is
no longer a point of reference. Simon's postulation of the artificial
as an imitation of the natural carries no weight in this context. In the
world portrayed by Gibson, being is convertible into infinite forms, and
values of identity are constituted primarily through the manipulation
of technology. The materials which constitute the substance of design
have already gone through so many transformations that their locus in
nature is no longer evident. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">If design
in Neuromancer is victorious at the expense of reality, how do we reflect
on the issue of meaning in Gibson's world? We first need to question what
meaning is in a world where reality is no longer the ground on which values
are formed. Meaning then becomes a strategic concept that exists pragmatically
at the interface of design and use. Its value is determined by operational
rather than semantic concerns. The characters in Neuromancer have even
designed themselves, but without an external ethical imperative or an
inner sense of self to guide them. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><strong>Neuromancer</strong>
is a fictional depiction of Jean Baudrillard's world of the simulacrum.
As in Gibson's novel, the real for Baudrillard, as he states it in "The
Precession of Simulacra, "is nothing more than operational" <a href="#11">[11]</a>. According to him, the simulacrum is a sign for the
real that substitutes for the real itself. The result is what he calls
the "hyperreal." Baudrillard believes there can be no representation,
since "simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself
a simulacrum" <a href="#12">[12]</a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The world
of <strong>Neuromancer</strong> is a reflection of Baudrillard's own nihilism.
He sees the West as having lost what he calls the "wager on representation."
This wager was based on the belief that signs could exchange for depths
of meaning and that something external to the exchange---he mentions God---could
guarantee it. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">However,
Baudrillard himself expresses no faith in God or a metanarrative of equivalent
power. He expresses his doubt as follows: </font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">But what
if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">reduced
to the signs which attest his existence? Then the whole </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">system
becomes weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">simulacrum---not
unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">for what
is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">without
reference or circumference <a href="#13">[13]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Although
Baudrillard is a prophet of doom, his ability to explore the implications
of a world without the presence of the real is useful. As in <strong>Neuromancer</strong>,
meaning only exists for Baudrillard in the operation of exchange rather
than in a reality outside it. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">In his book
<strong>Simulations</strong>, Baudrillard discusses the difficulty of
finding meaning in a world without a metanarrative, which Jean-Francois
Lyotard defines as any large idea or presence that exists as an uncontested
phenomenon outside the realm of human social action. And yet postmodern
theorists, led by Lyotard, have insisted that metanarratives are no longer
possible. As Lyotard states in <strong>The Postmodern Condition</strong>
of 1979, "I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives" <a href="#14">[14]</a>. He believes that knowledge may be accepted as legitimate
for reasons other than its inherent truth, and he wants to guard against
the hegemonic dominance of knowledge that, in his perception, may be illegitimate.
I use qualifiers to account for Lyotard's interpretation of legitimate
and illegitimate knowledge to insure that we relate his thought to his
own perception of truth rather than to anything that is or isn't inherently
truthful. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Although
Lyotard's skepticism has usefully stimulated a critical analysis of how
social discourses are constructed, it has also reinforced the belief of
many that social life has no ground of meaning. The disbelief in metanarratives,
particularly among prominent cultural theorists, is an essential factor
in the argument that the postmodern is a rupture with the modern. Although
metanarratives of the modern have been variously defined, the belief in
progress animated by instrumental reason is a central one, as is the belief
in universals rather than differences. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Expanding
the Discourse The collapse of a particular modernist paradigm has opened
the space of social discourse to many voices that were formerly marginalized
or suppressed. But the recognition of difference has also led to a widespread
refusal to postulate the world in terms of shared values. Lyotard refers
to the situation of difference as "a pragmatics of language particles"
<a href="#15">[15]</a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">However,
many people, including myself, are unhappy with the postmodern condition
as Lyotard and other scholars, critics and artists have defined and elaborated
it. But this does not mean that it has to be countered by sustaining a
modernist position that is no longer valid. In the most profound sense,
the specter of instrumental reason, with its increasing technological
power, let loose on what remains of nature without any moral or ethical
imperative to govern it is terrifying. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Mark Sagoff
has described the potential impact of advances in biotechnology on the
environment: </font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The goal
of biotechnology is to improve upon nature, </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">to replace
natural organisms and processes with artificial ones, </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">in order
to increase overall social efficiency and profit. . . . </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">That is
why we spend more to produce economically valuable </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">engineered
species than to protect economically useless endangered ones. </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">And that
is also why we continually turn whatever natural and wild </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">ecological
systems we may have---from rain forests to savannas to </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">estuaries---into
carefully managed and engineered (and therefore </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">predictable
and profitable) bioindustrial productive systems <a href="#16">[16]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The issues
raised here are similar to those previously referred to in <strong>Neuromancer</strong>
and thus justify the critic Peter Fitting's reading of Gibson's world
as "not so much an image of the future, but the metaphorical evocation
of life in the present" <a href="#17">[17]</a>. The technical possibilities of biotechnology, as described
by Sagoff, have already blurred the boundaries between the artificial
and the real. Rather than an imitation of nature, the managed biosystem
becomes a replacement of it. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">These biosystems
still maintain the appearance of the natural in that they draw their energy
from the earth, but their transformation from natural to managed systems
may disengage them from a larger ecological balance which their managers
are either unaware of or do not wish to take into account. Such biosystems
might be simulacra of nature without our even knowing it. Instrumental
reason continues to alter species and biosystems for human use, particularly
for economic profit. This is design but, as in <strong>Neuromancer</strong>,
it flourishes only at the expense of the natural. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The confusion
between the artificial and the natural that the capabilities of biotechnology
have engendered exists because both realms have been reduced to exchange-value.
When they are seen as interchangeable, as biotech managers prefer to see
them, one can be substituted for the other without any sense of loss.
The only way to distinguish between the two is to identify one with a
value that is missing in the other. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Extreme views
of biotechnologists and ecologists who collapse the distinction between
the artificial and the natural can be contrasted with another set of views
that regard nature as sacred. According to James Lovelock's <strong>Gaia</strong>
principle, the earth is a living being with whom we must cooperate. Ecofeminists
who have adopted the triadic values of feminism, ecology and spirituality
also share the belief that the earth is alive. As Paula Gunn Allen writes:
</font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The planet,
our mother, Grandmother Earth, is <u>physical</u> </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">and therefore
a spiritual, mental, and emotional being. Planets are </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">alive,
as are all their by-products or expressions, such as animals, </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">vegetables,
minerals, climatic and meteorological phenomena <a href="#18">[18]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Both the
Gaia metaphor and the Goddess narrative, which is at the core of ecofeminist
spiritual belief, have generated a strong critique of instrumental reason
which the ecofeminists identify with patriarchy. Carol Christ, also an
ecofeminist, believes that </font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The preservation
of the Earth requires a profound shift in consciousness: </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">a recovery
of more ancient and traditional views that revere the profound </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">connection
of all beings in the web of life and a rethinking of the relation </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">of both
humanity and divinity to nature <a href="#19">[19]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">For ecofeminists,
the narrative of Goddess spirituality has been a powerful impetus to political
action. They have led and participated in demonstrations against acid
rain, the destruction of the rain forests, the depletion of the ozone
layer, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and have, as well, been
involved with numerous other causes related to a healthy environment.
Their aim, as Starhawk, another ecofeminist says, is not simply to oppose
patriarchal power but "to transform the structure of power itself" <a href="#20">[20]</a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The accomplishments
of ecofeminists on two fronts--- opposing groups that damage the earth's
ecology and creating actions to draw women together to collaborate positively
with the life forces of the Earth --- signify the power of a narrative
in changing human action. From the position of ecofeminism, the postmodern
philosophy of Vattimo and Lyotard has little to offer those who wish to
act together constructively. It can only acknowledge an absence of meaning.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Ecofeminism
has also made a valuable contribution to the understanding of discourse
formation through its resistance to a patriarchal narrative that has closed
out earlier matriarchal cultures in which women maintained roles of authority.
Starting from a marginalized position, the ecofeminists have, through
cooperative intellectual activity, made a place for themselves within
contemporary cultural discourse. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">They have
simply begun from a different position than either positivists or nihilistic
poststructuralists, with a project that could be consistently and cooperatively
pursued within the framework of a new narrative. They have also demonstrated
the power of spiritual conviction and experience in generating positive
action. Where they have been less effective is in establishing a rhetorical
stance from which to engage postmodern theories in both a critical and
an affirmative way. They have, however, implicitly challenged Lyotard's
dismissal of metanarratives by producing a narrative of their own that
is clearly empowering. While it might be seen as marginal because so few
people embrace it, the Goddess narrative can nonetheless form part of
a more inclusive metanarrative of spirituality within which difference
can be asserted just as the postmodernists argue it must be done socially.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Spirituality
as a metanarrative (and I interpret spirituality here as a connection
to the Divine) can serve as a basis for addressing the problems of meaning
and reality that have arisen from the expansion of the artificial. If
a broad discourse on the spirit can become as compelling for other social
groups as the Goddess narrative has been for ecofeminists, then it has
the capacity to empower large numbers of people to find meaning and fulfillment
in action directed to the well- being and life enhancement of themselves
and others. It is difficult to say what form this action would take, particularly
as regards design, but it would certainly be characterized by the quest
for meaning and unity in relations with others. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">A recognition
of the Divine, as neither exclusively matriarchal or patriarchal, can
overcome the breach between the modern and the postmodern in several ways.
It can acknowledge the value of a social narrative in modernist thought
while recognizing the shortcomings of the First Modernity's faith in universal
categories and instrumental reason. It can also recognize the significance
of the many incisive critiques of contemporary culture and the attention
they have brought to the problem of the artificial. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">There is
much that design and technology have to gain from a metanarrative of divinely-inspired
spirituality, particularly as a ground of meaning that testifies to the
limits of the artificial. While I trace spirituality to a transcendent
source, I refer to it here as it is manifested in human action. What characterizes
the spiritual is both its immanence and transcendence, its capacity to
animate humans from within themselves while also existing as a presence
outside them. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Simulacra
and the Real I realize that spirituality---whether we link it to God,
the Goddess or some other transcendent source---is one of the most contested
terms in our contemporary vocabulary, but we have had little chance to
explore its meaning because it has been suppressed by a powerful intellectual
discourse of materialism. Hence, Donna Haraway states, in "A Manifesto
for Cyborgs," that </font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Late twentieth-century
machines have made thoroughly ambiguous </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">the difference
between natural and artificial, mind and body, </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">self-developing
and externally designed, and many other distinctions </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">that used
to apply to organisms and machines <a href="#21">[21]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Haraway claims
that we are moving to a "polymorphous information system" in which "any
objects or persons can be reasonably thought of in terms of disassembly
and reassembly; no 'natural' architectures constrain system design" <a href="#22">[22]</a> </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Wheareas
<strong>Neuromancer</strong> is a dystopic narrative of self-interest
and power played out through design and the control of technology, Haraway
proposes her view of this new polymorphous flexibility as a vehicle for
positive social change. However, the lack of a metanarrative that can
serve as a source of normative values compels Haraway to emphasize power
and economics as primary in determining the boundaries of the artificial
and the real. Such an absence also makes resistance to technology more
difficult. A principal theme of technological discourse is that innovative
devices will enable us to do things we have not done before. We are told
that new experiences made possible by technology will be expansive. Measured
against a reductive understanding of "natural" experience, this certainly
appears true. But the power of lived spirituality can enlarge the experience
of being and thus provide a stronger position from which to support or
resist new technologies. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Let's take
virtual reality research as an example <a href="#23">[23]</a>. Brenda Laurel has described the many experiences that
VR will make possible, as has Jaron Lanier, one of the medium's founders
and early spokespersons. In a 1989 interview, Lanier spoke euphorically
about the new possibilities of VR: </font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The computer
that's running the Virtual Reality will use your body's </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">movements
to control whatever body you choose to have in Virtual </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Reality,
which might be human or might be something quite different. </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">You might
very well be a mountain range or a galaxy or a pebble </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">on the
floor. Or a piano . . . I've considered being a piano. I'm interested
</font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">in being
musical instruments quite a lot <a href="#24">[24]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Needless to
say, neither Lanier nor others involved in VR research privilege personal
fantasy as the primary justification for what they do, but it is certainly
a strong element and one that promises extensive economic payoff. Surely,
virtual reality will continue to develop into a powerful entertainment medium
and has already become a site for virtual sex. </font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">While it
promises numerous advantages as a simulation device for training surgeons
or pilots, or for manipulating machines electronically at a distance,
the primary issue raised by virtual reality technology relates to whether
we experience simulation as a mark or a mask. This distinction was made
by Dennis Doordan in an article on simulation techniques in museum exhibits
<a href="#25">[25]</a>. When the designer marks the edge of simulation, it
is distinguished as a second-order experience whose referent is more authentic.
When the edge is masked, the simulation becomes a simulacrum, as Baudrillard
has pointed out, with no reference to an experience outside itself. Thus
the boundary between the simulated and the real collapses and the simulated
becomes the new real. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The counterbalance
of perceived constraints in corporeal society and the envisioned freedom
of an electronic self raises questions about how physical reality is valued
in relation to its virtual counterpart. Virtual reality enthusiasts sometimes
speak of VR as an alternative to the physical world, a place where constraints
can be overcome and new freedoms can be discovered. On one level, this
is classic techno- rhetoric. New technology always promises more. For
some, Virtual Reality suggests that electronic identity offers something
greater or more fulfilling than bodily existence. Recall the comment of
Case, Gibson's anti- hero in <strong>Neuromancer</strong>: "The body is
meat" <a href="#26">[26]</a>. For Case, jacking into cyberspace is a life-enhancing
experience that is more meaningful than being in his body. In cyberspace,
Case, a marginal figure in real life, displays a shrewd intelligence in
breaking through barriers to crack information codes, and he shows considerable
courage in maneuvering his way through nets of electronic opposition.
In a world of collapsed boundaries between the artificial and the real,
the symbolic world of the net becomes for Case a more intense and expansive
reality than his corporeal one. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">For Bruce
Sterling, a cyberpunk writer and libertarian, cyberspace is a political
frontier where the world can be invented anew without constraints. But
the expectation that this new symbolic territory will be immune to the
same tendencies to regulate life that characterize the corporeal world
is unrealistic. Lawyers are already at work on cases involving electronic
events that have threatened or violated constitutional rights and have
resulted in psychological or even physical harm to individuals. However,
legal codes will not be applied to virtual action without great difficulty.
As attorney Ann Branscomb states, </font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The ease
with which electronic impulses can be manipulated, </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">modified
and erased is hostile to a deliberate legal system </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">that arose
in an era of tangible things and relies on documentary </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">evidence
to validate transactions, incriminate miscreants and </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">affirm
contractual relations. <a href="#27">[27]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">As we know
from the many accounts of hacker behavior and from novels such as <strong>Neuromancer</strong>,
psychic engagement with electronic communication can be intense. What
is possible, as virtual reality research makes the visualization of electronic
identities more palpable, is that the potential for boundaries between
corporeal and virtual identities to become blurred will increase. In Baudrillard's
sense, electronic identity for some may no longer be a representation
of a self but may become the self against which life in the body is poor
psychic competition. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Cynicism
about the constructive possibilities of the American political system
leaves a vacuum of meaning in civil society that offers little or no resistance
to the artificial. In fact, the artificial as entertainment---from video
games to interactive VR environments---may become even more engaging than
corporeal life. It may also become such a powerful diversion that incursions
into the natural by aggressive biotech corporations will go unnoticed.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The images
of becoming as explorations of fantasy are a far cry from the discourses
about human development embodied in the different strands of the spiritual
metanarrative. Within this metanarrative, becoming is part of a continuity
of development that results in a self that understands its purpose within
a larger framework of spiritual evolution. For those who hold this belief,
spiritual evolution is the ground of reality against which the virtues
of the artificial must be assessed. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The late
Jesuit theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin related the
motivation to embrace spiritual evolution to the force with which it is
experienced. </font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">In any
morality of movement, on the contrary, which is only defined by relation
</font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">to a state
or object to be reached, it is imperative that the goal shall shine
with </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">enough
light to be desired and held in view. <a href="#28">[28]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">For Teilhard
the Jesuit priest, it is the love of the Divine that animates human beings
to strive together towards a higher unity. Yet, as a paleontologist, he
realized that humans need to think about spirituality in a new way that
does not oppose the realm of the spirit to that of science. As he wrote
in an unpublished text of 1937, "What we are all more or less lacking
at this moment is a new definition of holiness" <a href="#29">[29]</a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Spirituality
and the Future of Design We are now challenged to take up the same question
as Teilhard at a moment when the capabilities of technology are outstripping
our understanding of what being human means <a href="#30">[30]</a>. As artificial beings like cyborgs or replicants more
closely represent what we have always thought a human is, we are hard
pressed to define the difference between us and them. This is the problem
that Donna Haraway addressed with her myth of the cyborg, which draws
humans into a closer relation with machines. "No objects, spaces, or bodies
are sacred in themselves," she argued in "A Manifesto for Cyborgs"; "any
component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the
proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language"
<a href="#31">[31]</a>. The film <strong>Blade Runner</strong> plays with this
idea of interchangeability, leaving ambiguous the relation of Harrison
Ford to the female replicant whose feeling for him may or may not be the
equivalent of human love. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">To move towards
a self that is more differentiated from rather than similar to artificial
constructs, we need to understand the connection to the Divine as a force
of evolution that is not in opposition to technology, but at the same
time offers some of the equivalent fulfillments we currently seek in the
realm of the artificial <a href="#32">[32]</a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">We are living
in a moment which Teilhard de Chardin could not have conceived in 1937,
a moment where the real cannot be taken for granted but must be wrested
from the artificial. This is not an easy task but is instead a complex
struggle in which we need to engage if we are not to be engulfed by simulacra.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">This means
finding a way of talking about the spiritual that does not present it
in opposition to the artificial but instead recognizes particular forms
of the artificial as fruitful manifestations of spiritual energy. The
task is difficult because of the plurality of human experience and the
lack of a discourse that can accommodate the presence of spirituality
even for those who resist it or marginalize it. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The first
step, however, is to reintroduce the concept of spirituality into the
current philosophic debates from which it has been excluded. As a rhetorical
move, spirituality must be brought from the margins of contemporary thought
to a more central position. By considering its place in our reflections
on the artificial, we can raise questions about design and technology
that would otherwise go unasked. For example, we would have to wrestle
with questions of whether particular forms of artificiality, a genetic
mutant, an a- life environment, or an expert artificial intelligence system,
for example, were appropriate replacements for equivalent phenomena we
have designated as natural. In short, we would have to manage the boundaries
between the artificial, which is human- made, and the natural, which exists
independent of human design. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">While this
distinction is more problematic than it may have appeared to Herbert Simon
in 1969, it nonetheless empowers us to stake out a different territory
for design, one that does not attempt to completely replace the natural
but instead to complement it. This view is in opposition to the thrust
of techno-rhetoric, which always argues for the superiority of the artificial.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The Australian
design theorist Tony Fry has addressed this problem in a recent lecture
on ecodesign given at Notre Dame University. While Fry was referring to
the effects of too much design on the natural environment, I find his
words germane to the larger issue of boundaries for the artificial: </font>
</p><p>
</p><dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Designers
have to become more informed about the environmental impact </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">of what
they do; they have to be more critical, more responsible. </font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">They/I
have to fully recognize that whatever they/I design goes on designing.
</font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">It/I/they
also have to discover how to stop designing, which implies learning
</font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">how to
let essential system be, or designing mechanisms of artificial support
</font>
</dd><dd><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">that render
future design action redundant <a href="#33">[33]</a>. </font></dd>
</dl>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">A metanarrative
of spirituality can help designers resist techno-rhetoric, which sanctions
the continuous colonization of the natural. It can provide instead a more
profound and conscious reflection on the artificial as a subject which
has yet to be explored with any depth by designers and technologists.
Such reflection can resist the reduction of the artificial to simulacra,
on the one hand, or violations of nature, on the other. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">To the degree
that a metanarrative of spirituality is articulated as a discourse on
human purpose, it can enable technologists and designers to make decisions
about what research directions to pursue and what to design <a href="#34">[34]</a>.
I don't want to make grandiose claims for spirituality as the source of
an entirely new design paradigm when in fact many of our products already
fully satisfy human needs. But I do want to suggest that the more a designer
or an engineer can conceive of a user as a person of depth and worth,
the more likely he or she is to design a valuable product <a href="#35">[35]</a>. Design, understood in a deeper sense, is a service.
It generates the products that we require to live our lives. To the degree
that our activities are enabled by the presence of useful products, spirituality
can be a source for cultivating a sense of what is worthwhile. As manifested
in product design and technological devices, spirituality is the attention
to human welfare and life enhancement seen both in relation to the individual
self and humanity as a whole. As designers and technologists develop a
more caring feeling for how people live, they may also generate new products
that respond to previously unimagined human activities. A discourse on
human purpose generated independently of the market is not utopian; it
can have an effect on what the market produces. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">A greater
attentiveness to questions of human welfare and purpose can also help
us weigh the merits of new technologies as well as the possibilities they
offer for the design of products. Bruce Sterling has characterized virtual
reality as the "ultimate designable medium," which can absorb infinite
amounts of human ingenuity <a href="#36">[36]</a>. The design of cyberspace, for example, could become
a parallel economy where electronic analogues of corporeal experience
are bought and sold. This activity could absorb vast amounts of capital
and concentrate it in the hands of a few corporations that control the
technology to make it happen. We need to ask ourselves whether the construction
of such analogues is where designers can most usefully concentrate their
talent and the economy its capital. I think not. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">While ecological
concern is no substitute for the spiritual, eco-design has nonetheless
generated a discourse in which the natural and human cooperation with
it are central. In recent years, ecology has become important to product
designers and the public. Thus, we are now rethinking the construction
and purpose of many products in terms of materials, longevity, maintenance,
and other factors <a href="#37">[37]</a>. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">A metanarrative
of spirituality can empower designers and technologists to better understand
design as a form of action that contributes to social well-being. It can
link design to a process of social improvement that becomes the material
counterpart of spiritual evolution. Here a sense of continuity with the
modern period can reinvigorate the idea of a larger project for design
that needs to be thought anew in relation to contemporary conditions.
Most importantly, a spiritual metanarrative can empower individuals to
act confidently and forcefully in the face of a widespread cultural nihilism.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">This metanarrative
can also reunite design with the two contested terms, "meaning" and "reality,"
in a way that resists their collapse. There is clearly a need to understand
the meaning of products within a larger set of issues about the artificial,
but no theory has thus far addressed this problem. </font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">To consider
the question of the artificial in the way we need to, I want to return
to Herbert Simon's 1969 Compton Lectures on "The Science of the Artificial."
But I don't think we can accept Simon's assumption that either "nature"
or "science" hold uncontested claims to truth. What I believe is important
in Simon's work, particularly in terms of my own call for a new metanarrative,
is his delineation of the natural and the artificial as distinct realms.
Although the natural can be transformed into the artificial through human
action, and Simon acknowledges that "the world we live in today is much
more a man-made, or artificial, world than it is a natural world" <a href="#38">[38]</a>, the natural is not interchangeable with the artificial.
</font>
</p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Today we
recognize that the artificial is a much more complex phenomenon than postulated
by Simon in 1969. We therefore need to address it as a problem in new
ways. The various critiques of positivism and patriarchy, the deconstruction
of scientific discourse and the multiple new voices that now fill the
space of social debate are all part of a different situation within which
the artificial must be rethought. Among those heavily invested in the
artificial as a replacement for the natural, resistance to this challenge
is strong. And yet, as the artificial's incursion into the natural domain
of our lives advances, we may lose part of our humanity. In the face of
such a prospect, there is no choice but to fight back. </font>
</p><p><a name="ref"></a><br>
</p><p><br>
</p><h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="2">References
and Notes</font></h1>
<strong><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><b><a name="1"></a>1.</b></font></strong><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1">
In recent years, several tendencies have challenged this emphasis. Among
them is the conceptualization of design as strategic planning. Another is
emphasis on the interactive aspect of smart objects such as the Xerox copying
machine designed under the direction of John Rheinfrank by the firm of Fitch.
</font> </b>
<p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="2"><strong>2.</strong></a>
See Herbert Simon, <strong>The Sciences of the Artificial</strong> (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1969) p. 4; see also John Chris Jones, <strong>designing
design</strong> (London: Architecture and Technology Press, 1991). </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="3"><strong>3.</strong></a>
Branzi has devised the term "Second Modernity" to characterize our present
moment. "What I really mean by this term," he states, "is an acceptance
of Modernity as an artificial cultural system based neither on the principle
of necessity nor on the principle of identity, but on a set of conventional
cultural and linguistic values that somehow make it possible for us to
go on making choices and designing." For Branzi, the principles of necessity
and identity may refer to the Modern Movement's concern with function
and its faith in objects that could embody a sense of abolute value. He
characterizes the Second Modernity in terms of a set of theorems that
differentiate the conditions of design from the prior period. The term
enables him to continue talking about a "project for design," as the designers
of the First Modernity did, without having to ignore either postmodernism's
critical responses to modernism or the cultural complexities of the present
that it has recognized. See Andrea Branzi, "An Ecology of the Artificial"
and "Towards a Second Modernity," in Andrea Branzi, <strong>Learning from
Milan: Design and the Second Modernity</strong> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1988). See also Branzi, "Three Theorems for an Ecology of the Artificial
World," in <strong>La Quarta Metropoli: Design e Cultura Ambientale</strong>
(Milan: Domus Academy Edizione, 1990). </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="4"><strong>4.</strong></a>
Simon [2] p. 4. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="5"><strong>5.</strong></a>
Simon [2] p. 6. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="6"><strong>6.</strong></a>
Simon [2]. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="7"><strong>7.</strong></a>
Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist
Feminism in the 1980s," <strong>Socialist Review</strong> Vol. 80 (1985)
p. 66. Haraway reflected on her essay in several subsequent interviews.
See Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, "Cyborg at Large: Interview with
Donna Haraway," in Penley and Ross, eds., <strong>Technoculture</strong>
(Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1991) pp. 1--20; and, immediately
following in the same volume, Donna Haraway, "The Actors Are Cyborg, Nature
is Coyote, and the Geography Is Elsewhere: Postscript to 'Cyborgs at Large,'"
pp. 21--26. See also Marcy Darnovsky, "Overhauling the Mean Machines:
An Interview with Donna Haraway," <strong>Socialist Review</strong> Vol.
21, No. 2, 65--84 (1991). </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="8"><strong>8.</strong></a>
Gianni Vattimo, "An Apology for Nihilism," in Vattimo, <strong>The End
of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture</strong>,
Jon R. Snyder, trans. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988) p.
21. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="9"><strong>9.</strong></a>
Vattimo [8]. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="10"><strong>10.</strong></a>
William Gibson, <strong>Neuromancer</strong> (New York: Ace Books, 1984).
For a reflection on the relation of Gibson's novels to central issues
of postmodernism, see Peter Fitting, <strong>The Lessons of Cyberpunk</strong>,
in Penley and Ross [7] pp. 295--316. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="11"></a><strong>11.</strong>
Jean Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra," in Baudrillard, <strong>Simulations</strong>
(New York: Semiotext(e), 1983) p. 3. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="12"><strong>12.</strong></a>
Baudrillard [11] p.11. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="13"><strong>13.</strong></a>
Baudrillard [11] p. 10. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="14"><strong>14.</strong></a>
Jean-Francios Lyotard, <strong>The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge</strong>,
Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, trans. (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota
Press, 1984) p. xxiv. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="15"><strong>15.</strong></a>
Lyotard [14] p. xxiv. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="16"><strong>16.</strong></a>
Mark Sagoff, "On Making Nature Safe for Biotechnology," in Lev Ginzburg,
ed., <strong>Assessing Ecological Risks of Biotechnology</strong> (Stoneham,
MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1991) p. 345. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="17"><strong>17.</strong></a>
Fitting [10]. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="18"><strong>18.</strong></a>
Paula Gunn Allen, "The Woman I Love Is a Planet; The Planet I Love Is
a Tree," in Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein, eds., <strong>Reweaving
the World: the Emergence of Ecofeminism</strong> (San Francisco, CA: Sierra
Club Books, 1990) p. 52. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="19"><strong>19.</strong></a>
Carol P. Christ, "Rethinking Theology and Nature," in Diamond and Orenstein
[18] p. 58. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="20"><strong>20.</strong></a>
Starhawk, "Power, Authority, and Mystery," in Diamond and Orenstein [18]
p. 76. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="21"><strong>21.</strong></a>
Haraway [7] p. 69. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="22"><strong>22.</strong></a>
Haraway [7] p. 81. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="23"><strong>23.</strong></a>
For an extensive survey of virtual reality research, see Howard Rheingold,
<strong>Virtual Reality</strong> (London: Secker & Warburg, 1991).
</font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="24"><strong>24.</strong></a>
"An Interview with Jaron Lanier," <strong>Whole Earth Review</strong>
(Fall 1989) p. 110. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="25"><strong>25.</strong></a>
Dennis Doordan, "Nature on Display," <strong>Design Quarterly</strong>,
No. 155 (Spring 1992) p. 36. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="26"><strong>26.</strong></a>
A hopeful alternative to this conclusion is the current discussion within
the Internet community on the relation of electronic space to the body.
</font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="27"><strong>27.</strong></a>
Ann Branscomb, "Common Law for the Electronic Frontier," <strong>Scientific
American</strong> Vol. 265, No. 3, 112 (1991). </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="28"><strong>28.</strong></a>
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "The Phenomenon of Sprirtuality," in Teilhard
de Chardin, <strong>Human Energy</strong> (London: Collins, 1969) p. 109.
</font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="29"><strong>29.</strong></a>
Teilhard de Chardin [28] p. 110. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="30"><strong>30.</strong></a>
A recent exhibition catalog by Jeffrey Deitch and Dan Friedman is entitled
"Post-Human" (New York: J. Deitch, 1992). The Australian performance artist
Stelarc has created a performance that deconstructs the idea of the human
through an intensive relation of biology and technology. See Stelarc,
"Da strategie a cyberstrategie: prostetica, robotica ed esistenza remota,"
in Pier Luigi Capucci, <strong>Il Corpo Tecnologico: La Influenze delle
Tecnologie sul Corpo e sulle Sue Facolta</strong> (Bologna: Baskerville,
1994) pp. 61--76. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="31"><strong>31.</strong></a>
Haraway [7] p. 82. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="32"><strong>32.</strong></a>
The opposite course is taken by Hans Moravec in his search for congruencies
between humans and machines. See Hans Moravec, <strong>Mind Children:
The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence</strong> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1988). </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="33"><strong>33.</strong></a>
Tony Fry, "Crisis, Design, Ethics," unpublished paper presented at Notre
Dame University, February 1993. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="34"><strong>34.</strong></a>
The work of Japanese industrial designer Kenji Ekuan is a good example
of how spiritual values can be self-consciously brought into design practice.
Trained as a Buddhist priest before becoming a designer, Ekuan views products
as more than functional objects. See Kenji Ekuan, "Smallness as an Idea,"
in Richard Langdon, ed., <strong>Design and Industry</strong>, <strong>Design
Policy</strong> Vol. 2 (London: Design Council, 1984). In this paper,
Ekuan makes special reference to the <strong>butsudan</strong>, a small
portable Buddhist altar that can be installed in the home. He writes that
"the <strong>butsudan</strong> represents the essence of man's life in
a condensed form." It is "a portable device that helps the Japanese people
communicate with their ancestors and, above all, with themselves." I cite
his characterization of the <strong>butsudan</strong> as indicative of
his aim to embody spiritual values in material products. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="35"><strong>35.</strong></a>
Martin Buber has addressed the question of depth in human relationship
in his seminal book <strong>I and Thou</strong>, translated with a prologue
and notes by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner's, 1970). I discussed
Buber's work as the basis for a new design ethic in my article, "Community
and the Graphic Designer," <strong>Icographic</strong> Vol. 2, No. 4,
2--3 (1984). </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="36"><strong>36.</strong></a>
Sterling made these comments as part of a presentation at the Cooper-Hewitt
conference "At the Edge of the Millennium," held in New York City from
15--18 January 1992. </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="37"><strong>37.</strong></a>
A leading organization in this field is the Eco-Design Foundation in Sydney,
Australia. For information, contact them at P.O. Box 369, Rozelle, New
South Wales 2039, Australia. An important book that demonstrates the kinds
of new products that can result from an alternative design paradigm is
Nancy Jack Todd and John Todd, <strong>From Eco-Cities to Living Machines</strong>
(Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1994). This is a revised version
of an earlier edition, which was entitled <strong>Bioshelters, Ocean Arks,
City Farming: Ecology as the Basis of Design</strong> (San Francisco,
CA: Sierra Club Books, 1984). </font></b>
</p><p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, Verdana" size="1"><a name="38"><strong>38.</strong></a>
Simon [2] p. 3. </font></b>
</p><p><br>
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Pubblished in Leonardo On-Line <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/home.html">http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/home.html
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