Form and Function

I’ve been watching lectures from the TED conference. Most recently, I watched a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on the state of public education. He points out that our educational system prizes logic and reasoning (left hemisphere) over art and creativity of the right hemishere. He suggests that this is because the public system was founded in the 19th century, during the industrial revolution. People had to study that which would get them a job, so art, dance, and poetry, among other things, were universally de-emphasized.

Indeed, university professors – the most “successful” people to rise through our educational system – are literally disembodied. He points out that professors “live in their heads.. and slightly to one side… they look at their bodies as a mode of transport; it’s a way to get their heads to meetings.” It’s true, isn’t it? If it had its druthers, wouldn’t our educational system make everyone look like that? But do we really want a world full of egg heads? Would that be a better place to live and grow?

Robinson concludes his lecture by arguing that we ought to look at education as “human ecology” and need to “reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.” He analogizes our current hierarchy to strip mining, where we tear up the earth looking for one particular commodity, at the expense of the rest.

Another lecture/performance by David Pogue, a New York Times tech columnist, picks up on this theme, I think. He points out the difference between the design approaches of Microsoft versus Palm and Apple. Palm had a “three-taps rule.” The Palm was designed such that you could utilize all the features by tapping the screen no more than 3 times. With Microsoft word, you cannot even do the simplest tasks (such as opening a new blank document) without clicking at least 3 times. Microsoft cares more about power than design and usability. Contrast the remote for my stereo receiver at home, which has around 150 buttons, with my ipod, which has 5.

I believe that this is an example of innovation that takes into account both the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The fact that my ipod is the simplest and sexiest machine I own does little to improve its functionality. Still, the designers of it recognize that I am not a disembodied consumer of music. Form is important even where function resides.

A gestalt understanding of a human being would take into account matters of aesthetics in technology, education, religion, recreation, and any number of other matters. Why should we be content with things that only address a part of our being?