Reconsuming Ideals

Portigal Consulting talk about the analog human and the digital machine.

Harnessing the science of addiction:

You see all this harnessing of science, you know, whether it's neuro-this or lie detector-that or psychotherapy-this that gets used in the service of, not helping people, but helping marketers crack the nut of what people want, where is the desire center in the brain. You know, that we can learn things about people in a way that is "true"—that is predictable and true, and will determine consumption patterns. I find the idea that we should be able to do that just fascinating, because that's not the world of people that we live in as people, so why as marketers or designers or producers do we think that we should turn people into things that they really aren't?

The dilemma for product designers:

What do we do about that—that fact that half of what we do ends up in a landfill and not cared about or a pile in a corner. What does that mean to us as designers or as people who participate in this mass-production culture?

Things modeled in meetings don’t always match reality:

There isn't an offline and an online, people are doing both at the same time, or going back and forth, but you have them separated—why? You know, people in the room are plugging their ears and humming a tune—they don't want to have to do that—it threatens their job.