Chris Novello: ‘Computer Utopias’
∞ All welcome
Lecture
Thu, Oct 16th, 2014 / 6:30PMChris Novello is a programmer and designer. He has backgrounds in sound, HCI, videogames, viral media, and critical design. He teaches in the Graduate Program in RISD Graphic Design and holds an MFA from Brown University. He was the D.O. Summer Fellow for 2014.
Design can rip a hole in spacetime. Thirty thousand years ago, cubism slept. Its tools existed — a surface, a marking instrument, a hand — but its cultural technology had yet to bloom. Today, two billion humans carry a globally-networked supercomputer in their pocket. Apps are cave scribbles. What cubisms sleep in your pocket? What if you discovered them today? Design can amplify human intelligence. Is there a new Macintosh hiding in the Internet of Things? Is your phone’s camera the next mouse? Is a 1996 web search box truly the best user interface for artificial intelligence? If machine learning is going to reinvent humanism, will designers take the helm, or just leave it to Google? Design can drastically reorient civilization. What if advertising is the greatest sci-fi? What if a business is 2014's most effective instrument for great cultural change? What if networked capitalism is today's most important art medium? What if art history books never catch up?