Landscape Architecture: Landscape Architecture: - School of ...

Social-Physiological Evolution: Thumbs Up, Sit
Down and Shut Up
Self-styled cyber-feminist and technological futurologist Dr
Sadie Plant first identified the Oya Yubi Sedai (the thumb
generation) while researching the impact of hand-held
technologies such as mobile phones and computers on the
young. A report in the Observer newspaper (24 March 2002)
stated that a ‘physical mutation’ had taken place in the
under 25s, with the thumb replacing the index finger as
the pre-eminent control digit. Meanwhile, in a less
evolutionary body/mind development, the Police Authority
in Lancashire, in partnership with the local Primary Care
Trust, has been exploring a no-standing policy in Preston’s
pubs. The police are concerned that standing, ‘vertical
drinking’ and its related physical interaction causes
violence to flare up. Reported in the New York Times (28
August 2006), Jack Turner questioned whether this new
social control initiative could sober us up, citing several
other failed experiments in design puritanism. One
wonders how this legislated posture proposal might
develop, with overexuberant gesticulation discouraged and
the ‘elbows up’ pint-downing of the seasoned drinker
outlawed due to health and safety concerns. Sadly, I must
also report the slow demise of social whistling. Judith
Eagle, writing in the Guardian (11 October 2006) asks: ‘Why
don’t people whistle now?’ Dr Stephen Juan, an
anthropologist at the University of Sydney, cites two
possible reasons: one, that popular music is less
‘whistleable’, and/or two (more plausibly) that the
proliferation of portable music devices has (temporarily)
curtailed our own mobile tune-making capabilities.
Robot Care: Robots Care
Writing in the Guardian newspaper (11 October 2006),
Christopher Manthorp (operations manager for older
people’s services at Kent County Council) describes his
disappointment with the future. In this fledgling 21st
century he does not think that technology has serviced
society with the kind of transformative potential that so
much science fiction predicted. This, however, may be
changing, especially with the increasing use of assistive
technology (AT) in the care of the elderly. Presently
consisting of clunky remote alarm systems indicating the
patient’s well-being, Manthorp speculates on a future
where robots ‘will stalk the Earth, gossipping gently to
isolated older people while cleaning the carpets and
making the tea’. This sentiment certainly resonates with
Paul Judge’s assertion that ‘good technological design can
make us all happier’, given during the Royal Society of Arts
250th anniversary conference in 2004. ‘Design must play a
central role in ensuring that people will not be isolated or
reduced by the technology revolution.’ Richard Greenhill of
the Shadow Robot Company (http://www.shadowrobot.com)
has long believed in the social use of the robot and its
associated technologies, arguing that the
anthropomorphism of the Shadow Biped research project
(no longer operational) is clearly justified by staircases and
their mechanical negotiation. Likewise with their current
research project, the Shadow Hand, which controls 24
degrees of freedom with 40 air muscles. It could certainly
handle a cup of tea. 4
‘McLean’s Nuggets’ is an ongoing technical series inspired by Will McLean
and Samantha Hardingham’s enthusiasm for back issues of AD, as
explicitly explored in Hardingham’s AD issue The 1970s is Here and Now
(March/April 2005).
Will McLean is joint coordinator of technical studies (with Peter Silver) in
the Department of Architecture at the University of Westminster.
The Shadow Robot Company, Shadow Hand air-muscle-actuated robot
hand with 24 degrees of freedom, 2006.
Text © 2007 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 140 © John-Paul Frazer;
p 141 © Richard Greenhill
141+