Janko Jovanovic blog feed: Recent Episodes
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I’ve been always fascinated by time. This fascination is a mixture of curiosity, allurement, and slight unease. The unease comes from the cruel second law of thermodynamics and the fact that we’re constantly being pulled by the arrow of time into one direction. This is the only way we can exist.
But the way we exist in time is different than our everyday perception of existence. We live our lives surrounded by a world that largely seems permanent to us. Buildings, mountains, and rivers are entities that last longer than our lifetimes and we see them as always being there.
But if we look closer, none of these things are lasting entities. The world is not frozen and permanent. Everything lasts only for a little while before it transforms into something else. A carpet, you and me, a tree, a government, an island. Things are not things, things are processes, events.
One of the most interesting and approachable scientific books on time I’ve read is Carlo Rovelli’s “The order of Time” (the author is an amazing storyteller, given that the book is about quantum physics). Chapter 6 is entirely dedicated to this problem, and Carlo gives a beautiful example of how a simple stone is not a thing, but a process:
“The hardest stone, in the light of what we have learned from chemistry, from physics, from mineralogy, from geology, from psychology, is, in reality, a complex vibration of quantum fields, a momentary interaction of forces, a process that for a brief moment manages to keep its shape, to hold itself in equilibrium before disintegrating again into dust, a brief chapter in the history of interactions between the elements of the planet, a trace of Neolithic humanity, a weapon used by a gang of kids, an example in a book about time, a metaphor for an ontology, a part of a segmentation of the world that depends more on how our bodies are structured to perceive than on the object of perception—and, gradually, an intricate knot in that cosmic game of mirrors that constitutes reality.“
Think about anything that exists, really, and you’ll see that everything is an event.
Design can adopt this worldview. If we zoom out from the present moment, our narrow daily scopes, and fast-paced environments that rush us into delivery, we can gain much more comprehensive, long-term perspective on what we’re bringing into the world. How the things-events that we’re designing unfold over time, and what change they bring to the world. We could be more conscious about how things-events exist, at least for a little while.
Home and work, the biggest parts of our lives, are amalgamated during the pandemic. With boundaries between the two gone, our lives are pushed outside balance and we suffer from high workload, increased stress, sleep deprivation, burnout, and a series of other problems. Reestablishing this boundary is difficult but important in order to bring our […]
If you’re paying attention to the world around you, you might think that we’re going to hell soon. Climate emergency, loss of biodiversity, political turmoil, financial crises, societal collapse, and nuclear weapons are all big threats for our survival. But are these dark scenarios really going to come to life? How we think about the […]
Five years ago on this day I moved to Germany. Several months later, my wife and kids joined me. It’s been the roughest, the best, and the most turbulent five years. I mean, I’ve been through some difficult times in my life. Like growing up in war-torn Yugoslavia and dealing with all the perks that […]
Airbnb optimized for its users (landlords and travelers), but it affected entire neighborhoods, communities, rental industry, prices, and other structures we can't fully understand yet, effectively affecting millions of people beyond their user base. Non-users became collateral damage that suffer from unintended consequences and externalities.
Contemplation and reflexion on my own strategic design practice and an attempt to make sense of it.
If you have problems getting buy-in from your stakeholders, try to involve them in what you’re doing. A senior stakeholder might want to have a voice. A developer might want her ideas to be taken into account. A financial advisor might want to have a say about the costs. You don’t have to involve them […]
The brain that changes itself (Doidge), Sapiens: A brief history of humankind (Harari), The shape of things: A philosophy of design (Flusser), Design, when everybody designs: An introduction to design for social innovation (Manzini)
I’m thinking lately how we like to think of ourselves as problem solvers that leave the world in a better state. While in some cases this is true, the statement feels divorced from reality. Just look at the world today. This is the world full of unintended consequences built one on top of the other. […]
The first idea is just that – first idea. Almost a gut reaction to the problem. Yet we often treat it as a final one. We stick to that one – first thought – give it a lot of love, refine it, nurture it and defend it. Until it proves to be wrong. And we […]