IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

100 Chapter 5
complex interactions, not about filling up spaces with gadgets. Anything
that impedes the free flow of interactions among individuals hinders
innovation.
Aborigines dream in the vastness of the outback. Dream time for modern
man takes place in high-tech offices. ‘‘We no longer have roots, we have
aerials,’’ goes the urban legend, and telecommunications companies promote
‘‘anytime, anywhere’’ as a value. Life in systems-rich environments
is understudied. Social scientists research endlessly the impact of television
or the computer on behavior, and interaction designers study people in
control rooms, air traffic control towers, and the like, but behavioral investigations
of life for the rest of us in shopping malls, departure lounges, and
other highly designed environments are rare. This is a significant gap,
because these spaces have transformed the way we experience ‘‘here’’ and
‘‘now’’ and ‘‘there’’ and ‘‘next.’’
Some designers have become bored with gadgets and are learning now
how to map the way communications flow in different kinds of communities.
These ‘‘maps’’ do not just focus on so-called purposive communication—letters
to the bank, calling a taxi, a project meeting—but also
embrace social and cultural communications: the many ways people build
relationships, articulate their needs and fears, and interact informally with
friends, family, careers, officials, and so on. Traditional workplace design
emphasized the individual worker and his space and equipment. The
Walt Disney Company employs ‘‘imagineers’’ to animate its supremely
artificial environments; we are beginning to see something similar emerge
in the offices of knowledge-based companies: ‘‘office clowns,’’ ‘‘animateurs,’’
‘‘show business impresarios,’’ and others whose role is to generally
liven the place up.
Lost in Space
A lot of my work involves travel, and I have often pondered my curious
state of mind while engaged in modern movement. As well as being thresholds
between land and air, modern airports are gateways to complexity.
Through them, we enter the operating environment of global aviation,
one of mankind’s most complicated creations. But in airports and other
large spaces, although we are isolated from the rhythms of the natural
world, we remain ignorant of how this artificial one works. The result is to